ASTRONOMY 

AND GENERAL PHYSICS 
CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO 
NATURAL THEOLOGY 

BY THE 

REV. WILLI AM^WH E WELL M. A. 

FELLOW AND TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE 
CAMBRIDGE 




LONDON 

WILLIAM PICKERING 
1837 



C. W HITTING HAM, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. 



TO THE 



RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND 
CHARLES JAMES, 

LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. 

MY LORD, 

I owe it to you that I was selected for the 
task attempted in the following pages, a dis- 
tinction which I feel to be honourable ; and 
on this account alone I should have a pecu- 
liar pleasure in dedicating the work to your 
Lordship. I do so with additional gratifica- 
tion on another account: the Treatise has 
been written within the walls of the College 
of which your Lordship was formerly a resi- 
dent member, and its merits, if it have any, 
are mainly due to the spirit and habits of 
the place. The society is always pleased 
and proud to recollect that a person of the 



vi 



DEDICATION. 



eminent talents and high character of your 
Lordship is one of its members; and I am 
persuaded that any effort in the cause of 
letters and religion coming from that quarter, 
will have for you an interest beyond what it 
would otherwise possess. 

The subject proposed to me was limited ; 
my prescribed object is to lead the friends of 
religion to look with confidence and pleasure 
on the progress of the physical sciences, by 
showing how admirably every advance in our 
knowledge of the universe harmonizes with 
the belief of a most wise and good God. To 
do this effectually may be, I trust, a useful 
labour. Yet, I feel most deeply, what I 
would take this occasion to express, that 
this, and all that the speculator concerning 
Natural Theology can do, is utterly insuffici- 
ent for the great ends of Religion ; namely, 
for the purpose of reforming men's lives, of 
purifying and elevating their characters, of 
preparing them for a more exalted state of 
being. It is the need of something fitted to 
do this, which gives to Religion its vast and 
incomparable importance ; and this can, I 
well know, be achieved only by that Revealed 



DEDICATION. 



vii 



Religion of which we are ministers, but on 
which the plan of the present work did not 
allow me to dwell. 

j 

That Divine Providence may prosper the 
labours of your Lordship and of all who are 
joined with you in the task of maintaining 
and promoting this Religion, is, my Lord, the 
earnest wish and prayer of 

Your very faithful, 

and much obliged Servant, 

William Whewell. 



Trinity College, Cambridge , 
Feb. 25, 1833. 



ADVERTISEMENT TO THE 
SIXTH EDITION, 



The Bridgewater Treatises were written in con- 
sequence of a bequest of the Right Honourable 
and Reverend Francis Henry, Earl of Bridgewater, 
who died in the month of February, 1829, leaving 
the sum of eight thousand pounds, to be paid to per- 
sons who should be appointed to write and publish 
Treatises On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of 
God, as manifested in the Creation, &c. 

The selection of persons for this task was, by the 
Testator, assigned to the President of the Royal 
Society, Davies Gilbert, Esq., who at that time 
occupied the ^station of President, requested and 
received the assistance of the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, of the Bishop of London, and of a noble- 
man connected with the deceased, in selecting per- 
sons to carry into effect the intentions of the Tes- 
tator. And, besides the Treatise contained in the 
present volume, which was published in March, 
1833, the following Treatises appeared at various 
intervals : 

On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Con- 
dition of Man, by Professor Kidd. Published 1833. 

On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as mani- 
fested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the 
Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man, by Rev. 
Dr. Chalmers. Published 1833. 



X 



The Hand : its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as 
evincing Design, by Sir Charles Bell. Published 
1833. 

On Animal and Vegetable Physiology, by Dr. Roget. Pub- 
lished 1834. 

On Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Diges- 
tion, by Dr. Prout. Published 1834. 

On the History, Habits, and Instincts of Animals, by the 
Rev. W. Kirby. Published 1835. 

On Geology and Mineralogy, by the Rev. Dr. Buckland. 
Published 1836. 



To bring the Work within the reach of as large a 
body of readers as possible, the present edition is 
published in a smaller form, and at a cheaper price 
than the original edition. 



CONTENTS. 



[Within the last few years, several works have been pub- 
lished in this Country on subjects more or less closely ap- 
proaching to that here treated. It may, therefore, be not 
superfluous to say that the Author of the following pages 
believes that he has not borrowed any of his views or illus- 
trations from recent English writers on Natural Theology.] 

Page 



INTRODUCTION. 

Chap. I. Object of the Present Treatise 1 

II. On Laws of Nature 6 

III. Mutual Adaptation of Laws of Nature 1 1 

IV. Division of the Subject 14 

BOOK I. Terrestrial Adaptations 11 

Chap. I. The Length of the Year 21 

II. The Length of the Day 33 

III. The Mass of the Earth 42 

IV. The Magnitude of the Ocean 52 

V. The Magnitude of the Atmosphere 54 

VI. The Constancy and Variety of Climates 55 
VII. The Variety of Organization correspond- 
ing to the Variety of Climate 62 

VIII. The Constituents of Climate 75 

The Laws of Heat with respect to the 

Earth 76 

IX. The Laws of Heat with respect to Water 80 

X. The Laws of Heat with respect to Air 96 

XI. The Laws of Electricity 110 

XII. The Laws of Magnetism 113 

XIII. The Properties of Light with regard to 

Vegetation 115 

XIV. Sound 117 

XV. The Atmosphere 125 

XVI. Light 128 

XVII. The Ether 138 

XVIII. Recapitulation 141 



xii 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK II. Cosmical Arrangements 148 

Chap. I. The Structure of the Solar System 150 

II. The Circular Orbits of the Planets' 

round the Sun 154 

III. The Stability of the Solar System 159 

IV. The Sun in the Centre 169 

V. The Satellites 173 

VI. The Stability of the Ocean 177 

VII. The Nebular Hypothesis 181 

VIII. The Existence of a Resisting Medium 

in the Solar System 191 

IX. Mechanical Laws 210 

X. The Law of Gravitation 214 

XI. The Laws of Motion 231 

XII. Friction 238 

BOOK III. Religious Views 251 

Chap. I. The Creator of the Physical World is 

the Governor of the Moral World ... 254 

II. On the Vastness of the Universe 268 

III. On Man's Place in the Universe 279 

IV. On the Impression produced by the 

Contemplation of Laws of Nature ; 
or, on the Conviction that Law im- 
plies Mind 293 

V. On Inductive Habits ; or, on the Im- 
pression produced on Men's Minds 

by discovering Laws of Nature 303 

VI. On Deductive Habits ; or, on the Im- 
pression produced on Men's Minds 
by tracing the Consequences of ascer- 
tained Laws 323 

VII. On Final Causes 342 



VIII. On the Physical Agency of the Deity 356 
IX. On the Impression produced by con- 
sidering the Nature and Prospects of 
Science ; or, on the Impossibility of 
the Progress of our Knowledge ever 
enabling us to comprehend the Na- 
ture of the Deity 366 



ASTRONOMY 

AND 

GENERAL PHYSICS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Chapter I. 

Object of the Present Treatise. 

HE examination of the material world 
brings before us a number of things and 
relations of things which suggest to most minds 
the belief of a creating and presiding Intelli- 
gence. And this impression, which arises with 
the most vague and superficial consideration of 
the objects by which we are surrounded, is, we 
conceive, confirmed and expanded by a more 
exact and profound study of external nature. 
Many works have been written at different times 
with the view of showing how our knowledge of 
the elements and their operation, of plants and 
animals and their construction, may serve to 
w. B 




INTRODUCTION. 



nourish and unfold our idea of a Creator and 
Governor of the world. But though this is the 
case, a new work on the same subject may still 
have its use. Our views of the Creator and 
Governor of the world, as collected from or 
combined with our views of the world itself, 
undergo modifications, as we are led by new 
discoveries, new generalizations, to regard na- 
ture in a new light. The conceptions concern- 
ing the Deity, his mode of effecting his pur- 
poses, the scheme of his government, which are 
suggested by one stage of our knowledge of 
natural objects and operations, may become 
manifestly imperfect or incongruous, if adhered 
to and applied at a later period, when our ac- 
quaintance with the immediate causes of natural 
events has been greatly extended. On this ac- 
count it may be interesting, after such an ad- 
vance, to show how the views of the creation, 
preservation, and government of the universe, 
which natural science opens to us, harmonize with 
our belief in a Creator, Governor, and Preserver 
of the world. To do this with respect to certain 
departments of Natural Philosophy is the object 
of the following pages ; and the author will 
deem himself fortunate, if he succeeds in re- 
moving any of the difficulties and obscurities 
which prevail in men's minds, from the want of 
a clear mutual understanding between the reli- 
gious and the scientific speculator. It is need- 
less here to remark the necessarily imperfect 



OBJECT. 



3 



and scanty character of Natural Religion ; for 
most persons will allow that, however imper- 
fect may be the knowledge of a Supreme Intel- 
ligence which we gather from the contemplation 
of the natural world, it is still of most essen- 
tial use and value. And our purpose on this 
occasion is, not to show that Natural Theology 
is a perfect and satisfactory scheme, but to bring 
up our Natural Theology to the point of view in 
which it may be contemplated by the aid of our 
Natural Philosophy. 

Now the peculiar point of view which at pre- 
sent belongs to Natural Philosophy, and espe- 
cially to the departments of it which have been 
most successfully cultivated, is, that nature, so 
far as it is an object of scientific research, is a 
collection of facts governed by laws : our know- 
ledge of nature is our knowledge of laws ; of 
laws of operation and connexion, of laws of suc- 
cession and co-existence, among the various 
elements and appearances around us. And it 
must therefore here be our aim to show how 
this view of the universe falls in with our con- 
ception of the Divine Author, by whom we hold 
the universe to be made and governed. 

Nature acts by general laws; that is, the 
occurrences of the world in which we find our- 
selves, result from causes which operate accord- 
ing to fixed and constant rules. The succession of 
days, and seasons, and years, is produced by 
the motions of the earth \ and these again are 



INTRODUCTION. 



governed by the attraction of the sun, a force 
which acts with undeviating steadiness and re- 
gularity. The changes of winds and skies, 
seemingly so capricious and casual, are pro- 
duced by the operation of the sun's heat upon 
air and moisture, land and sea ; and though in 
this case we cannot trace the particular events to 
their general causes, as we can trace the motions 
of the sun and moon, no philosophical mind will 
doubt the generality and fixity of the rules by 
which these causes act. The variety of the 
effects takes place, because the circumstances 
in different cases vary ; and not because the 
action of material causes leaves anything to 
chance in the result. And again, though the 
vital movements which go on in the frame of ve- 
getables and animals depend on agencies still 
less known, and probably still more complex, 
than those which rule the weather, each of the 
powers on which such movements depend has 
its peculiar laws of action, and these are as uni- 
versal and as invariable as the law by which a 
stone falls to the earth when not supported. 

The world then is governed by general laws; 
and in order to collect from the world itself a 
judgment concerning the nature and character 
of its government, we must consider the import 
and tendency of such laws, so far as they come 
under our knowledge. If there be, in the ad- 
ministration of the universe, intelligence and 
denevolence, superintendence and foresight, 



OBJECT. 



5 



grounds for love and hope, such qualities may 
be expected to appear in the constitution and 
combination of those fundamental regulations 
by which the course of nature is brought about, 
and made to be what it is. 

If a man were, by some extraordinary event, 
to find himself in a remote and unknown coun- 
try, so entirely strange to him that he did not 
know whether there existed in it any law or 
government at all ; he might in no long time 
ascertain whether the inhabitants were con- 
trolled by any superintending authority ; and 
with a little attention he might determine also 
whether such authority were exercised with a 
prudent care for the happiness and well being 
of its subjects, or without any regard and fit- 
ness to such ends; whether the country were 
governed by laws at all, and whether the laws 
were good. And according to the laws which 
he thus found prevailing, he would judge of the 
sagacity, and the purposes of the legislative 
power. 

By observing the laws of the material uni- 
verse and their operation, we may hope, in a 
somewhat similar manner, to be able to direct 
our judgment concerning the government of the 
universe : concerning the mode in which the 
elements are regulated and controlled, their 
effects combined and balanced. And the gene- 
ral tendency of the results thus produced may 
discover to us something of the character of the 



6 



INTRODUCTION. 



power which has legislated for the material 
world. 

We are not to push too far the analogy thus 
suggested. There is undoubtedly a wide differ- 
ence between the circumstances of man legis- 
lating for man, and God legislating for matter. 
Still we shall, it will appear, find abundant rea- 
son to admire the wisdom and the goodness 
which have established the Laws of Nature, 
however rigorously we may scrutinize the im- 
port of this expression. 



Chapter II. 

On Laws of Nature. 

&||5^HEN we speak of material nature as 
Dem g governed by laws, it is sufficiently 
evident that we use the term in a manner some- 
what metaphorical. The laws to which man's 
attention is primarily directed are moral laws : 
rules laid down for his actions ; rules for the 
conscious actions of a person ; rules which, as a 
matter of possibility, he may obey or may trans- 
gress ; the latter event being combined, not with 
an impossibility, but with a penalty. But the 
Laws of Nature are something different from 
this ; they are rules for that which things are to 
do and suffer ; and this by no consciousness or 
will of theirs. They are rules describing the 



ON LAWS OF NATURE. 



7 



mode in which things do act ; they are invariably 
obeyed ; their transgression is not punished, it 
is excluded. The language of a moral law is, 
man shall not kill ; the language of a Law of 
Nature is, a stone ivill fall to the earth. 

These two kinds of laws direct the actions of 
persons and of things, by the sort of control of 
which persons and things are respectively sus- 
ceptible ; so that the metaphor is very simple 5 
but it is proper for us to recollect that it is a 
metaphor, in order that we may clearly appre- 
hend what is implied in speaking of the Laws 
of Nature. 

In this phrase are included all properties of 
the portions of the material world ; all modes of 
action and rules of causation, according to which 
they operate on each other. The whole course 
of the visible universe therefore is but the col- 
lective result of such laws ; its movements are 
only the aggregate of their working. All natural 
occurrences, in the skies and on the earth, in 
the organic and in the inorganic world, are 
determined by the relations of the elements and 
the actions of the forces of which the rules are 
thus prescribed. 

The relations and rules by which these occur- 
rences are thus determined necessarily depend 
on measures of time and space, motion and 
force ; on quantities which are subject to nume- 
rical measurement, and capable of being con- 
nected by mathematical properties. And thus 



8 



INTRODUCTION. 



all things are ordered by number and weight 
and measure. " God," as^ was said by the an- 
cients, " works by geometry:" the legislation of 
the material universe is necessarily delivered 
in the language of mathematics ; the stars in 
their courses are regulated by the properties of 
conic sections, and the winds depend on arith- 
metical and geometrical progressions of elasticity 
and pressure. 

The constitution of the universe, so far as it 
can be clearly apprehended by our intellect, 
thus assumes a shape involving an assemblage 
of mathematical propositions : certain algebrai- 
cal formulae, and the knowledge when and how 
to apply them, constitute the last step of the 
physical science to which we can attain. The 
labour and the endowments of ages have been 
employed in bringing such science into the con- 
dition in which it now exists : and an exact and 
extensive discipline in mathematics, followed 
by a practical and profound study of the re- 
searches of natural philosophers, can alone put 
any one in possession of all the knowledge con- 
cerning the course of the material world, which 
is at present open to man. The general impres- 
sion, however, which arises from the view thus 
obtained of the universe, the results which we 
collect from the most careful scrutiny of its ad- 
ministration, may, we trust, be rendered intel- 
ligible without this technical and laborious 
study, and to do this is our present object. 



ON LAWS OF NATURE. 



9 



It will be our business to show that the laws 
which really prevail in nature are, by their form, 
that is, by the nature of the connexion which 
they establish among the quantities and proper- 
ties which they regulate, remarkably adapted 
to the office which is assigned them ; and thus 
offer evidence of selection, design, and good- 
ness, in the power by which they were esta- 
blished. But these characters of the legislation 
of the universe may also be seen, in many in- 
stances, in a manner somewhat different from 
the selection of the law. The nature of the 
connexion remaining the same, the quantities 
which it regulates may also in their magnitude 
bear marks of selection and purpose. For the 
law may be the same while the quantities to 
which it applies are different. The law of the 
gravity which acts to the earth and to J upiter, 
is the same ; but the intensity of the force at 
the surfaces of the two planets is different. The 
law which regulates the density of the air at any 
point, with reference to the height from the 
earth's surface, would be the same, if the atmos- 
phere were ten times as large, or only one tenth 
as large as it is ; if the barometer at the earth's 
surface stood at three inches only, or if it showed 
a pressure of thirty feet of mercury. 

Now this being understood, the adaptation of 
a law to its purpose, or to other laws, may appear 
in two ways :— either in the form of the law, or 
in the amount of the magnitudes which it regu- 



10 



INTRODUCTION. 



lates, which are sometimes called arbitrary mag- 
nitudes. 

If the attraction of the sun upon the planets 
did not vary inversely as the square of the dis- 
tance, the form of the law of gravitation would 
be changed; if this attraction were, at the 
earth's orbit, of a different value from its present 
one, the arbitrary magnitude would be changed ; 
and it will appear, in a subsequent part of this 
work, that either change would, so far as we 
can trace its consequences, be detrimental. The 
form of the law determines in what manner the 
facts shall take place ; the arbitrary magnitude 
determines how fast, how far, how soon ; the 
one gives a model, the other a measure of the 
phenomenon ; the one draws the plan, the other 
gives the scale on which it is to be executed ; 
the one gives the rule, the other the rate. If 
either were wrongly taken, the result would be 
wrong too. 



11 



Chapter III. 
Mutual Adaptation in the Laws of Nature. 

O ascertain such laws of nature as we have 
been describing, is the peculiar business of 
science. It is only with regard to a very small 
portion of the appearances of the universe, that 
science in any strict application of the term, 
exists. In very few departments of research have 
men been able to trace a multitude of known facts 
to causes which appear to be the ultimate mate- 
rial causes, or to discern the laws which seem to 
be the most general laws. Yet, in one or two 
instances, they have done this, or something ap- 
proaching to this ; and most especially in the 
instance of that part of nature, which it is the ob- 
ject of this treatise more peculiarly to consider. 

The apparent motions of the sun, moon, and 
stars have been more completely reduced to 
their causes and laws than any other class of 
phenomena. Astronomy, the science which 
treats of these, is already a wonderful example 
of the degree of such knowledge which man 
may attain. The forms of its most important 
laws may be conceived to be certainly known ; 
and hundreds of observers in all parts of the 
world are daily employed in determining, with 



12 



INTRODUCTION. 



additional accuracy, the arbitrary magnitudes 
which these laws involve. 

The inquiries in which the mutual effects of 
heat, moisture, air, and the like elements are 
treated of, including, among other subjects, all 
that we know of the causes of the weather (me- 
teorology) is a far more imperfect science than 
astronomy. Yet, with regard to these agents, a 
great number of laws of nature have been dis- 
covered, though, undoubtedly, a far greater 
number remain still unknown. 

So far, therefore, as our knowledge goes, 
astronomy and meteorology are parts of natural 
philosophy in which we may study the order of 
nature with such views as we have suggested ; 
in which we may hope to make out the adapta- 
tions and aims which exist in the laws of nature ; 
and thus to obtain some light on the tendency 
of this part of the legislation of the universe, 
and on the character and disposition of the 
Legislator. 

The number and variety of the laws which 
we find established in the universe is so great, 
that it would be idle to endeavour to enumerate 
them. In their operation they are combined 
and intermixed in incalculable and endless com- 
plexity, influencing and modifying each other's 
effects in every direction. If we attempt to 
comprehend at once the whole of this complex 
system, we find ourselves utterly baffled and 
overwhelmed by its extent and multiplicity. 



ADAPTATION OF LAWS. 



13 



Yet, in so far as we consider the bearing of 
one part upon another, we receive an impression 
of adaptation, of mutual fitness, of conspiring 
means, of preparation and completion, of pur- 
pose and provision. This impression is sug- 
gested by the contemplation of every part of 
nature ; but the grounds of it, from the very 
circumstances of the case, cannot be conveyed 
in a few words. It can only be fully educed 
by leading the reader through several views and 
details, and must grow out of the combined in- 
fluence of these on a sober and reflecting frame 
of mind. However strong and solemn be the 
conviction which may be derived from a con- 
templation of nature, concerning the existence, 
the power, the wisdom, the goodness of our 
Divine Governor, we cannot expect that this 
conviction, as resulting from the extremely com- 
plex spectacle of the material world, should be 
capable of being irresistibly conveyed by a few 
steps of reasoning, like the conclusion of a geo- 
metrical proposition, or the result of an arith- 
metical calculation. 

We shall, therefore, endeavour to point out 
cases and circumstances in which the different 
parts of the universe exhibit this mutual adapta- 
tion, and thus to bring before the mind of the 
reader the evidence of wisdom and providence, 
which the external world affords. When we 
have illustrated the correspondencies which 
exist in every province of nature, between the 



14 



INTRODUCTION. 



qualities of brute matter and the constitution of 
living things, between the tendency to derange- 
ment and the conservative influences by which 
such a tendency is counteracted, between the 
office of the minutest speck and of the most 
general laws : it will, we trust, be difficult or 
impossible to exclude from our conception of this 
wonderful system, the idea of a harmonizing, a 
preserving, a contriving, an intending mind ; of 
a Wisdom, Power, and Goodness far exceeding 
the limits of our thoughts. 

Chapter IV. 

Division of the Subject, 

N making a survey of the universe, for the 
purpose of pointing out such correspon- 
dencies and adaptations as we have mentioned, 
we shall suppose the general leading facts of the 
course of nature to be known, and the explana- 
tions of their causes now generally established 
among astronomers and natural philosophers to 
be conceded. We shall assume therefore that 
the earth is a solid globe of ascertained magni- 
tude, which travels round the sun, in an orbit 
nearly circular, in a period of about three hun- 
dred and sixty-five days and a quarter, and in 
the mean time revolves, in an inclined position, 
upon its own axis in about twenty-four hours, 



DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 



15 



thus producing the succession jof appearances 
and effects which constitute seasons and climates, 
day and night ; — that this globe has its surface 
furrowed and ridged with various inequalities, 
the waters of the ocean occupying the depressed 
parts : — that it is surrounded by an atmosphere, 
or spherical covering of air ; and that various 
other physical agents, moisture, electricity, mag- 
netism, light, operate at the surface of the earth, 
according to their peculiar laws. This surface 
is, as we know, clothed with a covering of plants, 
and inhabited by the various tribes of animals, 
with all their variety of sensations, wants, and 
enjoyments. The relations and connexions of 
the larger portions of the world, the sun, the 
planets, and the stars, the cosmical arrangements 
of the system, as they are sometimes called, 
determine the course of events among these 
bodies ; and the more remarkable features of 
these arrangements are therefore some of the 
subjects for our consideration. These cosmical 
arrangements, in their consequences, effect also 
the physical agencies which are at work at the 
surface of the earth, and hence come in contact 
with terrestrial occurrences. They thus in- 
fluence the functions of plants and animals. 
The circumstances in the cosmical system of 
the universe, and in the organic system of the 
earth, which have thus a bearing on each other, 
form another of the subjects of which we shall 
treat. The former class of considerations attends 



16 



INTRODUCTION. 



principally to the stability and other apparent 
perfections of the solar system ; the latter to the 
well-being of the system of organic life by which 
the earth is occupied. The two portions of the 
subject may be treated as Cosmical Arrange 
ments and Terrestrial Adaptations. 

We shall begin with the latter class of adapta- 
tions, because in treating of these the facts are 
more familiar and tangible, and the reasonings 
less abstract and technical, than in the other 
division of the subject. Moreover, in this case 
men have no difficulty in recognising as desir- 
able the end which is answered by such adapta- 
tions, and they therefore the more readily con- 
sider it as an end. The nourishment, the 
enjoyment, the diffusion of living things, are 
willingly acknowledged to be a suitable object 
for contrivance ; the simplicity, the permanence 
of an inert mechanical combination might not 
so readily be allowed to be a manifestly wor- 
thy aim of a Creating Wisdom. The former 
branch of our argument may therefore be best 
suited to introduce to us the Deity as the insti- 
tutor of Laws of Nature, though the latter 
may afterwards give us a wider view and a 
clearer insight into one province of his legisla- 
tion. 



BOOK I. 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

E proceed in this Book to point out rela- 
tions which subsist between the laws of 
the inorganic world, that is, the general facts 
of astronomy and meteorology ; and the laws 
which prevail in the organic world, the proper- 
ties of plants and animals. 

With regard to the first kind of laws, they 
are in the highest degree various and unlike 
each other. The intensity and activity of natu- 
ral influences follow in different cases the most 
different rules. In some instances they are 
periodical, increasing and diminishing alter- 
nately, in a perpetual succession of equal inter- 
vals of time. This is the case with the heat at 
the earth's surface, which has a period of a year ; 
with the light, which has a period of a day. 
Other qualities are constant, thus the force of 
gravity at the same place is always the same. 
In some cases, a very simple cause produces 
very complicated effects ; thus the globular form 
of the earth, and the inclination of its axis during 
its annual motion, give rise to all the variety of 
climates. In other cases a very complex and 
w. c 




18 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



variable system of causes produces effects com- 
paratively steady and uniform; thus solar and 
terrestrial heat, air, moisture, and probably many 
other apparently conflicting agents, join to pro- 
duce our weather, which never deviates very far 
from a certain average standard. 

Now a general fact, which we shall endeavour 
to exemplify in the following chapters, is this : 
— That those properties of plants and animals 
which have reference to agencies of a periodical 
character, have also by their nature a periodical 
mode of working ; while those properties which 
refer to agencies of constant intensity, are ad- 
justed to this constant intensity : and again, 
there are peculiarities in the nature of organized 
beings which have reference to a variety in the 
conditions of the external world, as, for instance, 
the difference of the organized population of 
different regions : and there are other pecu- 
liarities which have a reference to the constancy 
of the average of such conditions, and the limited 
range of the deviations from that average; as, 
for example, that constitution by which each 
plant and animal is fitted to exist and prosper 
in its usual place in the world. 

And not only is there this general agreement 
between the nature of the laws which govern 
the organic and inorganic world, but also there 
is a coincidence between the arbitrary magni- 
tudes which such laws involve on the one hand 
and on the other. Plants and animals have, in 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 19 

their construction, certain periodical functions, 
which have a reference to alternations of heat 
and cold ; the length of the period which be- 
longs to these functions by their construction, 
appears to be that of the period which belongs 
to the actual alternations of heat and cold, 
namely, a year. Plants and animals have again 
in their construction certain other periodical 
functions, which have a reference to alternations 
of light and darkness ; the length of the period 
of such functions appears to coincide with the 
natural day. In like manner the other arbitrary 
magnitudes which enter into the laws of gravity, 
of the effects of air and moisture, and of other 
causes of permanence, and of change, by which 
the influences of the elements operate, are the 
same arbitrary magnitudes to which the mem- 
bers of the organic world are adapted by the 
various peculiarities of their construction. 

The illustration of this view will be pursued 
in the succeeding chapters ; and when the coin- 
cidence here spoken of is distinctly brought be- 
fore the reader, it will, we trust, be found to 
convey the conviction of a wise and benevolent 
design, which has been exercised in producing 
such an agreement between the internal consti- 
tution and the external circumstances of org-a- 
nized beings. We shall adduce cases where 
there is an apparent relation between the course 
of operation of the elements and the course of 
vital functions ; between some fixed measure of 



20 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



time or space, traced in the lifeless and in the 
living world; where creatures are constructed 
on a certain plan, or a certain scale, and this 
plan or this scale is exactly the single one which 
is suited to their place on the earth ; where it 
was necessary for the Creator (if we may use 
such a mode of speaking) to take account of the 
weight of the earth, or the density of the air, 
or the measure of the ocean, and where these 
quantities are rightly taken account of in the 
arrangements of creation. In such cases we 
conceive that we trace a Creator, who, in pro- 
ducing one part of his work, was not forgetful 
or careless of another part ; who did not cast 
his living creatures into the world to prosper or 
perish as they might find it suited to them or 
not ; but fitted together, with the nicest skill, 
the world and the constitution which he gave to 
its inhabitants ; so fashioning it and them, that 
light and darkness, sun and air, moist and dry, 
should become their ministers and benefactors, 
the unwearied and unfailing causes of their well 
being. 

We have spoken of the mutual adaptation of 
the organic and the inorganic world. If we 
were to conceive the contrivance of the world 
as taking place in an order of time in the con- 
triving mind, we might also have to conceive 
this adaptation as taking place in one of two 
ways ; we might either suppose the laws of inert 
nature to be accommodated to the foreseen wants 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



21 



of living tilings, or the organization of life to be 
accommodated to the previously established 
laws of nature. But we are not forced upon 
any such mode of conception, or upon any deci - 
sion between such suppositions ; since, for the 
purpose of our argument, the consequence of 
either view is the same. There is an adaptation 
somewhere or other, on either supposition. 
There is account taken of one part of the sys 
tern in framing the other : and the mind which 
took such account can be no other than that of 
the Intelligent Author of the universe. When 
indeed we come to see the vast number, the 
variety, the extent, the interweaving, the recon- 
ciling of such adaptations, we shall readily allow, 
that all things are so moulded upon and locked 
into each other, connected by such subtilty and 
profundity of design, that we may well abandon 
the idle attempt to trace the order of thought in 
the mind of the Supreme Ordainer. 



Chapter I. 

The Lenyth of the Year. 

YEAR is the most important and ob- 
vious of the periods which occur in the 
organic, and especially in the vegetable world. 
In this interval of time the cycle of most of the 



22 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

external influences which operate upon plants is 
completed. There is also in plants a cycle of in- 
ternal functions, corresponding to this succession 
of external causes. The length of either of these 
periods might have been different from what it 
is, according to any grounds of necessity which 
we can perceive. But a certain length is se- 
lected in both instances, and in both instances 
the same. The length of the year is so deter- 
mined as to be adapted to the constitution of 
most vegetables ; or the construction of vege- 
tables is so adjusted as to be suited to the length 
which the year really has, and unsuited to a 
duration longer or shorter by any considerable 
portion. The vegetable clock-work is so set as 
to go for a year. 

The length of the year or interval of recur- 
rence of the seasons is determined by the time 
which the earth employs in performing its revo- 
lution round the sun : we can very easily con- 
ceive the solar system so adjusted that the year 
should be longer or shorter than it actually is. 
We can imagine the earth to revolve round the 
sun at a distance greater or less than that which 
it at present has, all the forces of the system 
remaining unaltered. If the earth were re- 
moved towards the centre by about one-eighth 
of its distance, the year would be diminished by 
about a month ; and in the same manner it 
would be increased by a month on increasing 
the distance by one-eighth. We can suppose 



LENGTH OF THE YEAR. 



23 



the earth at a distance of 84 or 108 millions of 
miles, just as easily as at its present distance of 
96 millions : we can suppose the earth with its 
present stock of animals and vegetables placed 
where Mars or where Venus is, and revolving 
in an orbit like one of theirs : on the former 
supposition our year would become twenty- 
three, on the latter seven of our present months. 
Or we can conceive the present distances of the 
parts of the system to continue what they are, 
and the size, or the density of the central mass, 
the sun, to be increased or diminished in any 
proportion; and in this way the time of the 
earth's revolution might have been increased or 
diminished in any degree ; a greater velocity, 
and consequently a diminished period, being 
requisite in order to balance an augmented cen- 
tral attraction. In any of these ways the length 
of the earth's natural year might have been dif- 
ferent from what it now is : in the last way 
without any necessary alteration, so far as we 
can see, of temperature. 

Now, if any change of this kind were to take 
place, the working of the botanical world would 
be thrown into utter disorder, the functions of 
plants would be entirely deranged, and the 
whole vegetable kingdom involved in instant 
decay and rapid extinction. 

That this would be the case, may be collected 
from innumerable indications. Most of our 
fruit trees, for example, require the year to be 



24 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



of its present length. If the summer and the 
autumn were much shorter, the fruit could not 
ripen ; if these seasons were much longer, the 
tree would put forth a fresh suit of blossoms, to 
be cut down by the winter. Or if the year 
were twice its present lengthy a second crop of 
fruit would probably not be matured, for want? 
among other things, of an intermediate season 
of rest and consolidation, such as the winter is. 
Our forest trees in like manner appear to need 
all the seasons of our present year for their per- 
fection ; the spring, summer, and autumn, for 
the developement of their leaves and consequent 
formation of their proper juice, and of wood 
from this ; and the winter for the hardening 
and solidifying the substance thus formed. 

Most plants, indeed, have some peculiar 
function adapted to each period of the year, 
that is of the now existing year. The sap as- 
cends with extraordinary copiousness at two 
seasons, in the spring and in the autumn, espe- 
cially the former. The opening of the leaves 
and the opening of the flowers of the same 
plants are so constant to their times, (their ap- 
pointed times, as we are naturally led to call 
them,) that such occurrences might be taken as 
indications of the times of the year. It has 
been proposed in this way to select a series of 
botanical facts which should form a calendar ; 
and this has been termed a calendar of Flora. 
Thus, if we consider the time of putting forth 



LENGTH OF THE YEAR. 



25 



leaves,* the honeysuckle protrudes them in the 
month of J anuary ; the gooseberry, currant, and 
elder in the end of February, or beginning of 
March ; the willow, elm, and lime-tree in April ; 
the oak and ash, which are always the latest 
among trees, in the beginning or towards the 
middle of May. In the same manner the flow- 
ering; has its regular time : the mezereon and 
snow-drop push forth their flowers in February ; 
the primrose in the month of March ; the cow- 
slip in April ; the great mass of plants in May 
and June ; many in July, August, and Sep- 
tember ; some not till the month of October, as 
the meadow saffron ; and some not till the ap- 
proach and arrival of winter, as the laurustinus 
and arbutus. 

The fact which we have here to notice, is the 
recurrence of these stages in the developement of 
plants, at intervals precisely or very nearly of 
twelve months. Undoubtedly, this result is in 
part occasioned by the action of external stimu- 
lants upon the plant, especially heat, and by the 
recurrence of the intensity of such agents. Ac- 
cordingly, there are slight differences in the 
times of such occurrences, according to the 
backwardness or forwardness of the season, and 
according as the climate is genial or otherwise. 
Gardeners use artifices which will, to a certain 
extent, accelerate or retard the time of develope- 

* Loudon, Encyclopaedia of Gardening', 848. 



26 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



ment of a plant. But there are various circum- 
stances which show that this recurrence of the 
same events and at equal intervals is not entirely 
owing to external causes, and that it depends 
also upon something in the internal structure 
of vegetables. Alpine plants do not wait for 
the stimulus of the sun's heat, but exert such a 
struggle to blossom, that their flowers are seen 
among the yet unmelted snow. And this is 
still more remarkable in the naturalization of 
plants from one hemisphere to the other. When 
we transplant our fruit trees to the temperate 
regions south of the equator, they continue for 
some years to flourish at the period which cor- 
responds to our spring. The reverse of this ob- 
tains, with certain trees of the southern hemi- 
sphere. Plants from the Cape of Good Hope, 
and from Australia, countries whose summer is 
simultaneous with our winter, exhibit their 
flowers in the coldest part of the year, as the 
heaths. 

This view of the subject agrees with that 
maintained by the best Botanical writers. Thus 
Decandolle observes that after making allow- 
ance for all meteorological causes, which deter- 
mine the epoch of flowering, we must reckon as 
another cause the peculiar nature of each species. 
The flowering once determined, appears to be 
subject to a law of periodicity and habit.* 



* Decandolle. Physiologic vol. ii. 478. 



LENGTH OF THE YEAR. 



27 



It appears then that the functions of plants 
have by their nature a periodical character ; and 
the length of the period thus belonging to vege- 
tables is a result of their organization. Warmth 
and light, soil and moisture, may in some degree 
modify, and hasten or retard the stages of this 
period ; but when the constraint is removed the 
natural period is again resumed. Such stimu- 
lants as we have mentioned are not the causes 
of this periodicity. They do not produce the 
varied functions of the plant, and could not oc- 
casion their performance at regular intervals, 
except the plant possessed a suitable construc- 
tion. They could not alter the length of the 
cycle of vegetable functions, except within cer- 
tain very narrow limits. The processes of the 
rising of the sap, of the formation of proper 
juices, of the unfolding of leaves, the opening 
of flowers, the fecundation of the fruit, the ri- 
pening of the seed, its proper deposition in or- 
der for the reproduction of a new plant ;— all 
these operations require a certain portion of time, 
and could not be compressed into a space less 
than a year, or at least could not be abbreviated 
in any very great degree. And on the other 
hand, if the winter were greatly longer than it 
now is, many seeds would not germinate at the 
return of spring. Seeds which have been kept 
too long require stimulants to make them fer- 
tile. 

If therefore the duration of the seasons were 



28 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

much to change, the processes of vegetable life 
would be interrupted, deranged, distempered. 
What, for instance, would become of our calen- 
dar of Flora, if the year were lengthened or 
shortened by six months? Some of the dates 
would never arrive in the one case, and the ve- 
getable processes which mark them would be 
superseded ; some seasons would be without 
dates in the other case, and these periods would 
be employed in a way hurtful to the plants, and 
no doubt speedily destructive. We should have 
not only a year of confusion, but, if it were re- 
peated and continued, a year of death. 

But in the existing state of things, the dura- 
tion of the earth's revolution round the sun, and 
the duration of the revolution of the vegetable 
functions of most plants are equal. These two 
periods are adjusted to each other. The stimu- 
lants which the elements apply come at such 
intervals and continue for such times, that the 
plant is supported in health and vigour, and 
enabled to reproduce its kind. Just such a 
portion of time is measured out for the vegetable 
powers to execute their task, as enables them to 
do so in the best manner. 

Now such an adjustment must surely be ac- 
cepted as a proof of design, exercised in the for- 
mation of the world. Why should the solar 
year be so long and no longer ? or, this being of 
such a length, why should the vegetable cycle 
be exactly of the same length? Can this be 



LENGTH OF THE YEAR. 



20 



chance ? And this occurs, it is to be observed, 
not in one, or in a few species of plants, but in 
thousands. Take a small portion only of known 
species, as the most obviously endowed with 
this adjustment, and say ten thousand. How 
should all these organized bodies be constructed 
for the same period of a year. How should all 
these machines be wound up so as to go for the 
same time? Even allowing that they could 
bear a year of a month longer or shorter, how 
do they all come within such limits ? No chance 
could produce such a result. And if not by 
chance, how otherwise could such a coincidence 
occur, than by an intentional adjustment of 
these two things to one another ? by a selection 
of such an organization in plants, as would fit 
them to the earth on which they were to grow ; 
by an adaptation of construction to conditions ; 
of the scale of the construction to the scale of 
conditions. 

It cannot be accepted as an explanation of 
this fact in the economy of plants, that it is ne- 
cessary to their existence ; that no plants could 
possibly have subsisted, and come down to us, 
except those which were thus suited to their 
place on the earth. This is true ; but this does 
not at all remove the necessity of recurring to 
design as the origin of the construction by 
which the existence and continuance of plants 
is made possible. A watch could not go, ex- 
cept there were the most exact adjustment in 



30 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

the forms and positions of its wheels ; yet no 
one would accept it as an explanation of the 
origin of such forms and positions, that the 
watch would not go if these were other than 
they are. If the objector were to suppose that 
plants were originally fitted to years of various 
lengths, and that such only have survived to 
the present time, as had a cycle of a length 
equal to our present year, or one which could 
be accommodated to it ; we should reply, that 
the assumption is too gratuitous and extravagant 
to require much consideration ; but that, more- 
over, it does not remove the difficulty. How 
came the functions of plants to be periodical at 
all? Here is, in the first instance, an agree- 
ment in the form of the laws that prevail in the 
organic and in the inorganic world, which ap- 
pears to us a clear evidence of design in their 
Author. And the same kind of reply might be 
made to any similar objection to our argument. 
Any supposition that the universe has gradually 
approximated to that state of harmony among 
the operations of its different parts, of which we 
have one instance in the coincidence now under 
consideration, would make it necessary for the 
objector to assume a previous state of things 
preparatory to this perfect correspondence. And 
in this preparatory condition we should still be 
able to trace the rudiments of that harmony, for 
which it was proposed to account : so that even 
the most unbounded license of hypothesis would 



LENGTH OF THE YEAR. 



31 



enable the opponent to obliterate the traces of 
an intentional adaptation of one part of nature 
to another. 

Nor would it at all affect the argument, if 
these periodical occurrences could be traced to 
some proximate cause : if for instance it could 
be shown, that the budding or flowering of 
plants is brought about at particular intervals, 
by the nutriment accumulated in their vessels 
during the preceding months. For the ques- 
tion would still remain, how their functions were 
so adjusted, that the accumulation of the nutri- 
ment necessary for budding and flowering, 
together with the operation itself, comes to oc- 
cupy exactly a year, instead of a month only, 
or ten years. There must be in their structure 
some reference to time : how did such a refer- 
ence occur ? how was it determined to the par- 
ticular time of the earth's revolution round the 
sun? This could be no otherwise, as we con- 
ceive, than by design and appointment. 

We are left therefore with this manifest ad- 
justment before us, of two parts of the universe, 
at first sight so remote ; the dimensions of the 
solar system and the powers of vegetable life. 
These two things are so related, that one has 
been made to fit the other. The relation is as 
clear as that of a watch to a sundial. If a per- 
son were to compare the watch with a dial, 
hour after hour, and day after day, it would be 
impossible for him not to believe that the watch 



32 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

had been contrived to accommodate itself to the 
solar day. We have at least ten thousand kinds 
of vegetable watches of the most various forms, 
which are all accommodated to the solar year ; 
and the evidence of contrivance seems to be no 
more capable of being eluded in this case than 
in the other. 

The same kind of argument might be applied 
to the animal creation. The pairing, nesting, 
hatching, fledging, and flight of birds, for in- 
stance, occupy each its peculiar time of the year; 
and, together with a proper period of rest, fill 
up the twelve months. The transformations of 
most insects have a similar reference to the sea- 
sons, their progress and duration. " In every 
species" (except man), says a writer* on animals, 
" there is a particular period of the year in which 
the reproductive system exercises its energies. 
And the season of love and the period of ges- 
tation are so arranged that the voung ones are 
produced at the time wherein the conditions of 
temperature are most suited to the commence- 
ment of life. 9 ' It is not our business here to 
consider the details of such provisions, beautiful 
and striking as they are. But the prevalence 
of the great law of periodicity in the vital func- 
tions of organized beings will be allowed to have 
a claim to be considered in its reference to as- 
tronomy, when it is seen that their periodical 



* Fleming. Zool. i. 400. 



LENGTH OF THE YEAR. 



33 



constitution derives its use from the periodical 
nature of the motions of the planets round the 
sun ; and that the duration of such cycles in the 
existence of plants and animals has a reference 
to the arbitrary elements of the solar system : a 
reference which, we maintain, is inexplicable 
and unintelligible, except by admitting into our 
conceptions an intelligent Author, alike of the 
organic and inorganic universe. 



Chapter II. 
The Length of the Day, 

E shall now consider another astronomi- 
cal element, the time of the revolution of 
the earth on its axis ; and we shall find here 
also that the structure of organized bodies is 
suited to this element ; — that the cosmical and 
physiological arrangements are adapted to each 
other. 

We can very easily conceive the earth to re- 
volve on her axis faster or slower than she does, 
and thus the days to be longer or shorter than 
they are, without supposing any other change 
to take place. There is no apparent reason 
why this globe should turn on its axis just three 
hundred and sixty-six times while it describes 
its orbit round the sun. The revolutions of the 
other planets, so far as we know them, do not 

w. d 




34 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



appear to follow any rule by which they are 
connected with the distance from the sun. 
Mercury, Venus, and Mars have days nearly 
the length of ours. Jupiter and Saturn revolve 
in about ten hours each. For any thing we can 
discover, the earth might have revolved in this 
or any other smaller period ; or we might have 
had, without mechanical inconvenience, much 
longer days than we have. 

But the terrestrial day, and consequently the 
length of the cycle of light and darkness, being 
what it is, we find various parts of the constitu- 
tion both of animals and vegetables, which have 
a periodical character in their functions, corres- 
ponding to the diurnal succession of external 
conditions ; and we find that the length of the 
period, as it exists in their constitution, coin- 
cides with the length of the natural day* 

The alternation of processes which takes place 
in plants by day and by night is less obvious, 
and less obviously essential to their well-being, 
than the annual series of changes. But there 
are abundance of facts which serve to show that 
such an alternation is part of the vegetable 
economy. 

In the same manner in which Linnaeus pro- 
posed a Calendar of Flora, he also proposed a 
Dial of Flora, or Flower-Clock ; and this was 
to consist, as will readily be supposed, of plants, 
which mark certain hours of the day, by open- 
ing and shutting their flowers. Thus the day- 



LENGTH OF THE DAY. 



25 



lily (hemerocallis fulva) opens at five in the 
morning ; the leontodon taraxacum, or common 
dandelion, at five or six ; the hieracium latifo- 
lium (hawkweed), at seven ; the hieracium pilo- 
sella, at eight ; the calendula arvensis, or mari- 
gold, at nine ; the mesembryanthemum neapoli- 
tanum, at ten or eleven : and the closing of 
these and other flowers in the latter part of the 
day offers a similar system of hour marks. 

Some of these plants are thus expanded in 
consequence of the stimulating action of the 
light and heat of the day, as appears by their 
changing their time, when these influences are 
changed ; but others appear to be constant to 
the same hours, and independent of the impulse 
of such external circumstances. Other flowers 
by their opening and shutting prognosticate the 
weather. Plants of the latter kind are called 
by Linnaeus, meteoric flowers, as being regulated 
by atmospheric causes : those which change 
their hour of opening and shutting with the 
length of the day, he terms tropical; and the 
hours which they measure are, he observes, like 
Turkish hours, of varying length at different 
seasons. But there are other plants which he 
terms equinoctial ; their vegetable days, like 
the days of the equator, being always of equal 
length ; and these open, and generally close, at 
a fixed and positive hour of the day. Such 
plants clearly prove that the periodical character, 
and the period of the motions above described^ 



35 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



do not depend altogether on external circum- 
stances. 

Some curious experiments on this subject 
were made by Decandolle. He kept certain 
plants in two cellars, one warmed by a stove 
and dark, the other lighted by lamps. On some 
of the plants the artificial light appeared to 
have no influence, {convolvulus arvensis, convol- 
vulus cneorum, silene fruticosa,) and they still 
followed the clock hours in their opening and 
closing. The night-blowing plants appeared 
somewhat disturbed, both by perpetual light and 
j)erpetual darkness. In either condition they 
accelerated their going so much, that in three 
days they had gained half a day, and thus ex-^ 
changed night for day as their time of opening. 
Other flowers went slower in the artificial light 
( convolvulus purpureus ). In like manner those 
plants which fold and unfold their leaves were 
variously affected by this mode of treatment. 
The oxalis stricta and oxalis incarnata kept 
their habits, without regarding either artificial 
light or heat. The mimosa leucocephala folded 
and unfolded at the usual times, whether in 
light or in darkness, but the folding up was not 
so complete as in the open air. The mimosa 
pudica (sensitive plant), kept in darkness during 
the day time, and illuminated during the night, 
had in three days accommodated herself to the 
artificial state, opening in the evening, and 
closing in the morning ; restored to the open 
air, she recovered her usual habits. 



LENGTH OF THE DAY. 



Tropical plants in general, as is remarked 
by our gardeners, suffer from the length of our 
summer daylight ; and it has been found neces- 
sary to shade them during a certain part of the 
day. 

It is clear from these facts, that there is a 
diurnal period belonging to the constitution of 
vegetables ; though the succession of functions 
depends in part on external stimulants, as light 
and heat, their periodical character is a result 
of the structure of the plant ; and this structure 
is such, that the length of the period, under the 
common influences to which plants are exposed, 
coincides with the astronomical day. The power 
of accommodation which vegetables possess in 
this respect, is far from being such as either to 
leave the existence of this periodical constitu- 
tion doubtful, or to entitle us to suppose that 
the day might be considerably lengthened or 
shortened without injury to the vegetable king- 
dom. 

Here then we have an adaptation between the 
structure of plants, and the periodical order of 
light and darkness which arises from the earth's 
rotation ; and we find, moreover, that the arbi- 
trary quantity in the two laws, the length of 
the cycle of the physiological and of the astro- 
nomical fact, is the same. Can this have oc- 
curred any otherwise than by an intentional ad- 
justment ? 

Any supposition that the astronomical cycle 



88 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



has occasioned the physiological one, that the 
structure of plants has been brought to be what 
it is by the action of external causes, or that 
such plants as could not accommodate them- 
selves to the existing day have perished, would 
be not only an arbitrary and baseless assump- 
tion, but moreover useless for the purposes of 
explanation which it professes, as we have no- 
ticed of a similar supposition with respect to 
the annual cycle. How came plants to have 
periodicity at all in those functions which have 
a relation to light and darkness ? This part of 
their constitution was suited to organized things 
which were to flourish on the earth, and it is 
accordingly bestowed on them ; it was neces- 
sary for this end that the period should be of a 
certain length ; it is of that length and no other . 
Surely this looks like intentional provision. 

Animals also have a period in their functions 
and habits ; as in the habits of waking, sleeping, 
eating, &c. and their well-being appears to de- 
pend on the coincidence of this period with the 
length of the natural day. We see that in the 
day, as it now is, all animals find seasons for 
taking food and repose, which agree perfectly 
with their health and comfort. Some animals 
feed during the day, as nearly all the rumina- 
ting, animals and land birds ; others feed only 
in the twilight, as bats and owls, and are called 
crepuscular ; while many beasts of prey, aquatic 
birds, and others, take their food during the 



LENGTH OF THE DAY. 



nicht. Those animals which are nocturnal 
feeders are diurnal sleepers, while those which 
are crepuscular, sleep partly in the night and 
partly in the day ; but in all, the complete 
period of these functions is twenty-four hours. 
Man, in like manner, in all nations and ages, 
takes his principal rest once in twenty-four 
hours ; and the regularity of this practice seems 
most suitable to his health, though the duration 
of the time allotted to repose is extremely dif- 
ferent in different cases. So far as we can 
judge, this period is of a length beneficial to 
the humaia frame, independently of the effect 
of external agents. In the voyages recently 
made into high northern latitudes, where the 
sun did not rise for three months, the crews of 
the ships were made to adhere, with the utmost 
punctuality to the habit of retiring to rest at 
nine, and rising a quarter before six ; and they 
enjoyed, under circumstances apparently the 
most trying, a state of salubrity quite remark- 
able. This shows, that according to the com- 
mon constitution of such men, the cycle of 
twenty-four hours is very commodious, though 
not imposed on them by external circumstances. 

The hours of food and repose are capable of 
such wide modifications in animals, and above 
all in man, by the influence of external stimu- 
lants and internal emotions, that it is not easy 
to distinguish what portion of the tendency to 
such alternations depends on original constitu- 



40 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

tion. Yet no one can doubt that the inclina- 
tion to food and sleep is periodical, or can main- 
tain, with any plausibility, that the period may 
be lengthened or shortened without limit. We 
may be tolerably certain that a constantly re- 
curring period of forty-eight hours would be too 
long for one day of employment and one period 
of sleep, with our present faculties; and all, 
whose bodies and minds are tolerably active, 
will probably agree that, independently of habit, 
a perpetual alternation of eight hours up and 
four in bed would employ the human powers 
less advantageously and agreeably than an alter- 
nation of sixteen and eight. A creature which 
could employ the full energies of his body and 
mind uninterruptedly for nine months, and then 
take a single sleep of three months, would not 
be a man. 

When, therefore, we have subtracted from 
the daily cycle of the employments of men and 
animals, that which is to be set down to the ac- 
count of habits acquired, and that which is oc- 
casioned by extraneous causes, there still remains 
a periodical character ; and a period of a cer- 
tain length, which coincides with, or at any 
rate easily accommodates itself to, the duration 
of the earth's revolution. The physiological 
analysis of this part of our constitution is not 
necessary for our purpose. The succession of 
exertion and repose in the muscular system, of 
excited and dormant sensibility in the nervous, 



LENGTH OF THE DAY. 



41 



appear to be fundamentally connected with the 
muscular and nervous powers, whatever the na- 
ture of these may be. The necessity of these 
alternations is one of the measures of the inten- 
sity of those vital energies ; and it would seem 
that we cannot, without assuming the human 
powers to be altered, suppose the intervals of 
tranquillity which they require to be much 
changed. This view agrees with the opinion 
of some of the most eminent physiologists. 
Thus Cabanis * notices the periodical and iso- 
chronous character of the desire of sleep, as well 
as of other appetites. He states also that sleep 
is more easy and more salutary, in proportion 
as we go to rest and rise every day at the same 
hours ; and observes that this periodicity seems 
to have a reference to the motions of the solar 
system. 

Now how should such a reference be at first 
established in the constitution of man, animals, 
and plants, and transmitted from one generation 
of them to another ? If we suppose a wise and 
benevolent Creator, by whom all the parts of 
nature were fitted to their uses and to each 
other, this is what we might expect and can 
understand. On any other supposition such 
a fact appears altogether incredible and incon- 
ceivable. 

* Rapports du Physique et du Moral de 1' Homme, II. 371. 



42 



Chapter III. 
The Mass of the Earth. 

E shall now consider the adaptation which 
may, as we conceive, be traced in the 
amount of some of the quantities which determine 
the course of events in the organic world; and 
especially in the amount of the forces which are 
in action. The life of vegetables and animals 
implies a constant motion of their fluid parts, 
and this motion must be produced by forces 
which urge or draw the particles of the fluids. 
The positions of the parts of vegetables are also 
the result of the flexibility and elasticity of their 
substance ; the voluntary motions of animals are 
produced by the tension of the muscles. But 
in all those cases, the effect really produced de- 
pends upon the force of gravity also ; and in 
order that the motions and positions may be 
such as answer their purpose, the forces which 
produce them must have a due proportion to the 
force of gravity. In human works, if, for in- 
stance, we have a fluid to raise, or a weight to 
move, some calculation is requisite, in order to 
determine the power which we must use, rela- 
tively to the work which is to be done : we 
have a mechanical problem to solve, in order 
that we may adjust the one to the other. And 




MASS OF THE EARTH. 



43 



the same adjustment, the same result of a com- 
parison of quantities, manifests itself in the rela- 
tion which the forces of the organic world bear 
to the force of gravity. 

The force of gravity might, so far as we can 
judge, have been different from what it now is. 
It depends upon the mass of the earth ; and this 
mass is one of the elements of the solar system, 
which is not determined by any cosmical neces- 
sity of which we are aware. The masses of the 
several planets are very different, and do not 
appear to follow any determinate rule, except 
that upon the whole those nearer to the sun ap- 
pear to be smaller, and those nearer the out- 
skirts of the system to be larger. We cannot 
see anything which would have prevented either 
the size or the density of the earth from being 
different, to a very great extent, from what they 
are. 

Now, it will be very obvious that if the inten- 
sity of gravity were to be much increased, or 
much diminished, if every object were to become 
twice as heavy or only half as heavy as it now 
is, all the forces, both of involuntary and volun- 
tary motion which produce the present orderly 
and suitable results by being properly propor- 
tioned to the resistance which they experience, 
would be thrown off their balance ; they would 
produce motions too quick or too slow, wrong 
positions, jerks and stops, instead of steady, 
well conducted movements. The universe would 



44 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

be like a machine ill regulated ; every thing 
would go wrong ; repeated collisions and a ra- 
pid disorganization must be the consequence. 
We will, however, attempt to illustrate one or 
two of the cases in which this would take place, 
by pointing out forces which act in the organic 
world, and which are adjusted to the force of 
gravity. 

l . The first instance we shall take, is the force 
manifested by the ascent of the sap in vege- 
tables. It appears, by a multitude of indispu- 
table experiments, (among the rest those of 
Hales, Mirbel, and Dutrochet,) that all plants 
imbibe moisture by their roots, and pump it up, 
by some internal force, into every part of their 
frame, distributing it into every leaf. It will 
easily be conceived that this operation must re- 
quire a very considerable mechanical force ; for 
the fluid must be sustained as if it were a single 
column reaching to the top of the tree. The 
division into minute parts and distribution 
through small vessels does not at all diminish 
the total force requisite to raise it. If, for in- 
stance, the tree be thirty-three feet high, the 
pressure must be fifteen pounds upon every 
square inch in the section of the vessels of the 
bottom, in order merely to support the sap. 
And it is not only supported, but propelled up- 
wards with great force, so as to supply the con- 
stant evaporation of the leaves. The pumping 
power of the tree must, therefore, be very con- 
siderable. 



MASS OF THE EARTH. 



45 



That this power is great, has been confirmed 
by various curious experiments, especially by 
those of Hales. He measured the force with 
which the stems and branches of trees draw the 
fluid from below, and push it upwards. He 
found, for instance, that a vine in the bleeding 
season could push up its sap in a glass tube to 
the height of twenty-one feet above the stump of 
an amputated branch. 

The force which produces this effect is part of 
the economy of the vegetable world ; and it is 
clear that the due operation of the force depends 
upon its being rightly proportioned to the force 
of gravity. The weight of the fluid must be 
counterbalanced, and an access of force must 
exist to produce the motion upwards. In the 
common course of vegetable life, the rate of 
ascent of the sap is regulated, on the one hand, 
by the upward pressure of the vegetable power, 
and on the other, by the amount of the gravity 
of the fluid, along with the other resistances, 
which are to be overcome. If, therefore, we 
suppose gravity to increase, the rapidity of this 
vegetable circulation will diminish, and the 
rate at which this function proceeds, will not 
correspond either to the course of the seasons, 
or the other physiological processes with which 
this has to co-operate. We might easily con- 
ceive such an increase of gravity as would stop 
the vital movements of the plant in a very short 
time. In like manner, a diminution of the 



46 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

gravity of the vegetable juices would accelerate 
the rising of the sap, and would, probably, 
hurry and overload the leaves and other organs, 
so as to interfere with their due operation. 
Some injurious change, at least, would take 
place. 

Here, then, we have the forces of the minutest 
parts of vegetables adjusted to the magnitude of 
the whole mass of the earth on which they exist. 
There is no apparent connection between the 
quantity of matter of the earth, and the force of 
imbibition of the roots of a vine, or the force of 
propulsion of the vessels of its branches. Yet, 
these things have such a proportion as the well- 
being of the vine requires. How is this to be 
accounted for, but by supposing that the circum- 
stances under which the vine was to grow, were 
attended to in devising its structure? 

We have not here pretended to decide whether 
this force of propulsion of vegetables is mecha- 
nical or not, because the argument is the same 
for our purpose on either supposition. Some 
very curious experiments have recently been 
made, (by M. Dutrochet) which are supposed 
to show that the force is mechanical \ that when 
two different fluids are separated by a thin mem- 
brane, a force, which M. Dutrochet calls endos- 
mose, urges one fluid through the membrane : and 
that the roots of plants are provided with small 
vesicles which act the part of such a membrane. 
M. Poisson has further attempted to show that 



MASS OF THE EARTH. 



47 



this force of endosmose may be considered as a 
particular modification of capillary action. If 
these views be true, we have here two mecha- 
nical forces, capillary action and gravity, which 
are adjusted to each other in the manner pre- 
cisely suited to the welfare of vegetables. 

2. As another instance of adaptation between 
the force of gravity and forces which exist in 
the vegetable world, we may take the positions 
of flowers. Some flowers grow with the hollow 
of their cup upwards : others, "hang the pen- 
sive head" and turn the opening downwards. 
Now of these " nodding flowers," as Linnaeus 
calls them, he observes that they are such as 
have their pistil longer than the stamens ; and, 
in consequence of this position, the dust from 
the anthers, which are at the ends of the stamens, 
can fall upon the stigma or extremity of the 
pistil ; which process is requisite for making the 
flower fertile. He gives as instances the flowers 
campanula, leucoium, galanthus, fritillaria. 
Other botanists have remarked that the position 
changes at different periods of the flower's pro- 
gress. The pistil of the Euphorbia (which is a 
little globe or germen on a slender stalk) grows 
upright at first, and is taller than the stamens : 
at the period suited to its fecundation, the stalk 
bends under the weight of the ball at its extre- 
mity, so as to depress the germen below the 
stamens : after this it again becomes erect, the 
globe being now a fruit filled with fertile seeds. 



43 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



The positions in all these cases depend upon 
the length and flexibility of the stalk which sup- 
ports the flower, or, in the case of the Euphorbia, 
the germen. It is clear that a very slight altera- 
tion in the force of gravity, or in the stiffness of 
the stalk, would entirely alter the position of the 
flower cup, and thus make the continuation of 
the species impossible. We have therefore here 
a little mechanical contrivance, which would 
have been frustrated if the proper intensity of 
gravity had not been assumed in the reckoning. 
An earth greater or smaller, denser or rarer 
than the one on which we live, would require a 
change in the structure and strength of the foot- 
stalks of all the little flowers that hang their 
heads under our hedges. There is something 
curious in thus considering the whole mass of 
the earth from pole to pole, and from circum- 
ference to centre, as employed in keeping a 
snowdrop in the position most suited to the pro- 
motion of its vegetable health. 

It would be easy to mention many other parts 
of the economy of vegetable life, which depend 
for their use on their adaptation to the force of 
gravity. Such are the forces and conditions 
which determine the positions of leaves and of 
branches. Such again those parts of the vege- 
table constitution which have reference to the 
pressure of the atmosphere ; for differences in 
this pressure appear to exercise a powerful in- 
fluence on the functions of plants, and to require 



MASS OF THE EARTH. 



49 



differences of structure. But we pass over these 
considerations. The slightest attention to the 
relations of natural objects will show that the 
subject is inexhaustible ; and all that we can or 
need do is to give a few examples, such as may 
show the nature of the impression which the 
examination of the universe produces. 

3. Another instance of the adjustment of or- 
ganic structure to the force of gravity may be 
pointed out in the muscular powers of animals. 
If the force of gravity were increased in any 
considerable proportion at the surface of the 
earth, it is manifest that all the swiftness, and 
strength, and grace of animal motions must dis- 
appear. If, for instance, the earth were as 
large as Jupiter, gravity would be eleven times 
what it is ; the lightness of the fawn, the speed 
of the hare, the spring of the tiger, could no 
longer exist with the existing muscular powers 
of those animals ; for man to lift himself up- 
right, or to crawl from place to place, would be 
a labour slower and more painful than the mo- 
tions of the sloth. The density and pressure of 
the air too would be increased to an intolerable 
extent, and the operation of respiration, and 
others, which depend upon these mechanical 
properties, would be rendered laborious, in- 
effectual, and probably impossible. 

If, on the other hand, the force of gravity 
were much lessened, inconveniences of an oppo- 
site kind would occur. The air would be too 

w. e 



50 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



thin to breathe ; the weight of our bodies, and 
of all the substances surrounding us, would be- 
come too slight to resist the perpetually occurring 
causes of derangement and unsteadiness : we 
should feel a want of ballast in our movements. 

It has sometimes been maintained by fanciful 
theorists that the earth is merely a shell, and 
that the central parts are hollow. All the rea- 
sons we can collect appear to be in favour of its 
being a solid mass, considerably denser than any 
known rock. If this be so, and if we suppose 
the interior to be at any time scooped out, so 
as to leave only such a shell as the above-men- 
tioned speculators have imagined, we should 
not be left in ignorance of the change, though 
the appearance of the surface might remain the 
same. We should discover the want of the 
usual force of gravity, by the instability of all 
about us. Things would not lie where we 
placed them, but would slide away with the 
slightest push. We should have a difficulty in 
standing or walking, something like what we 
have on ship-board when the deck is inclined ; 
and we should stagger helplessly through an 
atmosphere thinner than that which oppresses 
the respiration of the traveller on the tops of the 
highest mountains. 

We see therefore that those dark and un- 
known central portions of the earth, which are 
placed far beyond the reach of the miner and 
the geologist, and of which man will probably 



MASS OF THE EARTH. 



51 



never know anything directly, are not to be con- 
sidered as quite disconnected with us, as deposits 
of useless lumber without effect or purpose. We 
feel their influence on every step we take and 
on every breath we draw ; and the powers we 
possess, and the comforts we enjoy would be 
unprofitable to us, if they had not been pre- 
pared with a reference to those as well as to the 
near and visible portions of the earth's mass. 

The arbitrary quantity, therefore, of which we 
have been treating, the intensity of the force of 
gravity, appears to have been taken account of, 
in establishing the laws of those forces by which 
the processes of vegetable and animal life are 
carried on. And this leads us inevitably, we 
conceive, to the belief of a supreme contriving 
mind, by which these laws were thus devised 
and thus established. 



52 



Chapter IV. 
The Magnitude of the Ocean. 

HERE are several arbitrary quantities 
which contribute to determine the state of 
things at the earth's surface besides those already 
mentioned. Some of these we shall briefly refer 
to, without pursuing the subject into detail. We 
wish not only to show that the properties and 
processes of vegetable and animal life must be 
adjusted to each of these quantities in particular, 
but also to point out how numerous and com- 
plicated the conditions of the existence of or- 
ganized beings are ; and we shall thus be led to 
think less inadequately of the intelligence which 
has embraced at once, and combined without 
confusion, all these conditions. We appear thus 
to be conducted to the conviction not only of 
design and intention, but of supreme knowledge 
and wisdom. 

One of the quantities which enters into the 
constitution of the terrestrial system of things is 
the bulk of the waters of the ocean. The mean 
depth of the sea, according to the calculations 
of Laplace, is four or five miles. On this sup- 
position, the addition to the sea of one-fourth of 
the existing waters would drown the whole of 
the globe, except a few chains of mountains. 




MAGNITUDE OF THE OCEAN. 



53 



Whether this be exact or no, we can easily con- 
ceive the quantity of water which lies in the 
cavities of our globe to be greater or less than 
it at present is. With every such addition or 
subtraction the form and magnitude of the dry 
land would vary, and if this change were con- 
siderable, many of the present relations of things 
would be altered. It may be sufficient to men- 
tion one effect of such a change. The sources 
which water the earth, both clouds, rains, and 
rivers, are mainly fed by the aqueous vapour 
raised from the sea; and therefore if the sea 
were much diminished, and the land increased, 
the mean quantity of moisture distributed upon 
the land must be diminished, and the character 
of climates, as to wet and dry, must be materially 
affected. Similar, but opposite changes would 
result from the increase of the surface of the 
ocean. 

It appears then that the magnitude of the 
ocean is one of the conditions to which the 
structure of all organized beings which are 
dependent upon climate must be adapted. 



54 



Chapter V. 
The Magnitude of the Atmosphere. 

HE total quantity of air of which our 
atmosphere is composed is another of the 
arbitrary magnitudes of our terrestrial system; 
and we may apply to this subject considerations 
similar to those of the last section. We can see 
no reason why the atmosphere might not have 
been larger in comparison to the globe which it 
surrounds ; those of Mars and J upiter appear to 
be so. But if the quantity of air were increased, 
the structure of organized beings would in many 
ways cease to be adapted to their place. The 
atmospheric pressure, for instance, would be 
increased, which, as we have already noticed, 
would require an alteration in the structure of 
vegetables. 

Another way in which an increase of the mass 
of the atmosphere would produce inconvenience 
would be in the force of winds. If the cur- 
rent of air in 'a strong gale were doubled or 
tripled, as might be the case if the atmosphere 
were augmented, the destructive effects would 
be more than doubled or tripled. With such a 
change, nothing could stand against a storm. 
In general, houses and trees resist the violence 
of the wind ; and except in extreme cases, as 




MAGNITUDE OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 55 



for instance in occasional hurricanes in the West 
Indies, a few large trees in a forest are unusual 
trophies of the power of the tempest. The 
breezes which we commonly feel are harmless 
messengers, travelling so as to bring about the 
salutary changes of the atmosphere ; even the 
motion which they communicate to vegetables 
tends to promote their growth, and is so advan- 
tageous, that it has been proposed to imitate it 
by artificial breezes in the hothouse. But with 
a stream of wind blowing against them, like 
three, or five, or ten, gales compressed into the 
space of one, none of the existing trees could 
stand ; and except they could either bend like 
rushes in a stream, or extend their roots far 
wider than their branches, they must be torn up 
in whole groves. We have thus a manifest 
adaptation of the present usual strength of the 
materials and of the workmanship of the world 
to the stress of wind and weather which they 
have to sustain. 



Chapter VI. 
The Constancy and Variety of Climates. 




T is possible to conceive arrangements of 
: our system, according to which all parts 



of the earth might have the 1 same, or nearly the 
same, climate. If, for example, we suppose the 



56 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



earth to be a flat disk, or flat ring, like the ring 
of Saturn, revolving in its own plane as that 
does, each part of both the flat surfaces would 
have the same exposure to the sun, and the same 
temperature, so far as the sun's effect is con- 
cerned. There is no obvious reason why a planet 
of such a form might not be occupied by ani- 
mals and vegetables, as well as our present 
earth ; and on this supposition the climate would 
be every where the same, and the whole surface 
might be covered with life, without the necessity 
of there being any difference in the kind of in- 
habitants belonging to different parts. 

Again, it is possible to conceive arrangements 
according to which no part of our planet should 
have any steady climate. This may probably 
be the case with a comet. If we suppose such 
a body, revolving round the sun in a very oblong 
ellipse, to be of small size and of a very high 
temperature, and therefore to cool rapidly ; and 
if we suppose it also to be surrounded by a large 
atmosphere, composed of various gases ; there 
would, on the surface of such a body, be no 
average climate or seasons for each place. The 
years, if we give this name to the intervals of 
time occupied by its successive revolutions, 
would be entirely unlike one another. The 
greatest heat of one year might be cool com- 
pared with the greatest cold of a preceding one. 
The greatest heats and colds might succeed each 
other at intervals perpetually unequal. The 



CLIMATES. 



57 



atmosphere might be perpetually changing its 
composition by the condensation of some of its 
constituent gases. In the operations of the ele- 
ments, all would be incessant and rapid change, 
without recurrence or compensation. We can- 
not say that organized beings could not be fitted 
for such a habitation ; but if they were, the 
adaptation must be made by means of a consti- 
tution quite different from that of almost all or- 
ganized beings known to us. 

The state of things upon the earth, in its pre- 
sent condition, is very different from both these 
suppositions. The climate of the same place, 
notwithstanding perpetual and apparently irre- 
gular change, possesses a remarkable steadiness. 
And, though in different places the annual suc- 
cession of appearances in the earth and heavens, 
is, in some of its main characters, the same, the 
result of these influences in the average climate 
is very different. 

Now, to this remarkable constitution of the 
earth as to climate, the constitution of the ani- 
mal and vegetable world is precisely adapted. 
The differences of different climates are pro- 
vided for by the existence of entirely different 
classes of plants and animals in different coun- 
tries. The constancy of climate at the same 
place is a necessary condition of the prosperity 
of each species there fixed. 

We shall illustrate by a few details, these 
characteristics in the constitution of inorganic 



58 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



and of organic nature, with the view of fixing 
the reader's attention upon the correspondence 
of the two. 

1. The succession and alternation, at any 
given place, of heat and cold, rain and sun- 
shine, wind and calm, and other atmospheric 
changes, appear at first sight to be extremely 
irregular, and not subject to any law. It is, 
however, easy to see, with a little attention, that 
there is a certain degree of constancy in the 
average weather and seasons of each place, 
though the particular facts of which these gene- 
ralities are made up seem to be out of the reach 
of fixed laws. And when we apply any nume- 
rical measure to these particular occurrences, and 
take the average of the numbers thus observed^ 
we generally find a remarkably close corres- 
pondence in the numbers belonging to the whole, 
or to analogous portions of successive years. 
This will be found to apply to the measures 
given by the thermometer, the barometer, the 
hygrometer, the raingage, and similar instru- 
ments. Thus it is found that very hot summers, 
or very cold winters, raise or depress the mean 
annual temperature very little above or below 
the general standard. 

The heat may be expressed by degrees of the 
thermometer ; the temperature of the day is esti- 
mated by this measure taken at a certain period 
of the day, which period has been found by ex- 
perience to correspond with the daily average ; 



CLIMATES. 



59 



and the mean annual temperature will then be 
the average of all the heights of the thermometer 
so taken for every day in the year. 

The mean annual temperature of London, 
thus measured, is about 50 degrees and 4-10ths. 
The frost of the year 1788 was so severe that the 
Thames was passable on the ice ; the mean tem- 
perature of that year was 50 degrees and 6 -lOths, 
being within a small fraction of a degree of the 
standard. In 1796, when the greatest cold ever 
observed in London occurred, the mean tempe- 
rature of the year was 50 degrees and l-10th, 
which is likewise within a fraction of a degree 
of the standard. In the severe winter of 1813-14, 
when the Thames, Tyne, and other large rivers 
in England were completely frozen over, the 
mean temperature of the two years was 49 de- 
grees, being little more than a degree below the 
standard. And in the year 1808, when the 
summer was so hot that the temperature in Lon- 
don was as high as 93l degrees, the mean heat 
of the year was 50^, which is about that of the 
standard. 

The same numerical indications of the con- 
stancy of climate at the same place might be 
collected from the records of other instruments 
of the kind above mentioned. 

We shall, hereafter, consider some of the very 
complex agencies by which this steadiness is 
produced ; and shall endeavour to point out in- 
tentional adaptations to this object. But we 



60 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

may, in the meantime, observe how this property 
of the atmospheric changes is made subservient 
to a further object. 

To this constancy of the climates of each 
place, the structure of plants is adapted ; almost 
all vegetables require a particular mean tempe- 
rature of the year, or of some season of the year, 
a particular degree of moisture, and similar con- 
ditions. This will be seen by observing that the 
range of most plants as to climate is very limited. 
A vegetable which flourishes where the mean 
temperature is 55 degrees, would pine and 
wither when removed to a region where the 
average is 50 degrees. If, therefore, the aver- 
age at each place were to vary as much as this, 
our plants with their present constitutions would 
suffer, languish, and soon die. 

2. It will be readily understood that the same 
mode of measurement by which we learn the 
constancy of climate at the" same place, serves 
to sho w us the variety which belongs to different 
places. While the variations of the same region 
vanish when we take the averages even of mo- 
derate periods, those of distant countries are 
fixed and perpetual ; and stand out more clear 
and distinct, the longer is the interval for which 
we measure their operation. 

In the way of measuring already described, 
the mean temperature of Petersburg is 39 de- 
grees, of Rome 60, of Cairo 72. Such observa- 
tions as these, and others of the same kind, have 



CLIMATES. 



61 



been made at various places, collected and re- 
corded ; and in this way the surface of the earth 
can be divided by boundary lines into various 
strips, according to these physical differences. 
Thus, the zones which take in all the places 
having the same or nearly the same mean annual 
temperature, have been called isothermal zones. 
These zones run nearly parallel to the equator, 
but not exactly, for, in Europe, they bend to the 
north in going eastward. In the same manner, 
the lines passing through all places which have 
an equal temperature for the summer or the 
winter half of the year, have been called respec- 
tively isotheral and isochimal lines. These do 
not coincide with the isothermal lines, for a 
place may have the same temperature as another, 
though its summer be hotter and its winter 
colder, as is the case of Pekin compared with 
London. In the same way we might conceive 
lines drawn according to conditions depending 
on clouds, rain, wind, and the like circum- 
tances, if we had observations enough to enable 
us to lay down such lines. The course of vege- 
tation depends upon the combined influence of 
all such conditions ; and the lines which bound 
the spread of particular vegetable productions 
do not, in most cases, coincide with any of the 
.separate meteorological boundaries above spoken 
of. Thus the northern limit of vineyards runs 
through France, in a direction very nearly 
north-east and south-west, while the line of 



62 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

equal temperature is nearly east and west. And 
the spontaneous growth or advantageous culti- 
vation of other plants, is in like manner bounded 
by lines of which the course depends upon very 
complex causes, but of which the position is ge- 
nerally precise and fixed. 



Chapter VII. 

The Variety of Organization corresponding to 
the Variety of Climate. 

HE organization of plants and animals is 
in different tribes formed upon schemes 
more or less different, but in all cases adjusted in 
a general way to the course and action of the ele- 
ments. The differences are connected with the 
different habits and manners of living which 
belong to different species ; and at any one 
place the various species, both of animals and 
plants, have a number of relations and mutual 
dependencies arising out of these differences. 
But besides the differences of this kind, we find 
in the forms of organic life another set of differ- 
ences, by which the animal and vegetable king- 
dom are fitted for that variety in the climates of 
the earth, which we have been endeavouring to 
explain. 

The existence of such differences is too obvious 
to require to be dwelt upon. The plants and 




GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



63 



animals which flourish and thrive in countries 
remote from each other, offer to the eye of the 
traveller a series of pictures, which, even to an 
ignorant and unreflecting spectator, is full of a 
peculiar and fascinating interest, in consequence 
of the novelty and strangeness of the successive 
scenes. 

Those who describe the countries between the 
tropics, speak with admiration of the luxuriant 
profusion and rich variety of the vegetable pro- 
ductions of those regions. Vegetable life seems 
there far more vigorous and active, the circum- 
stances under which it goes on, far more favour- 
able than in our latitudes. Now if we conceive 
an inhabitant of those regions, knowing, from 
the circumstances of the earth's form and motion, 
the difference of climates which must prevail 
upon it, to guess, from what he saw about him, 
the condition of other parts of the globe as to 
vegetable wealth, is it not likely that he would 
suppose that the extratropical climates must be 
almost devoid of plants? We know that the 
ancients, living in the temperate zone, came to 
the conclusion that both the torrid and the 
frigid zones must be uninhabitable. In like 
manner the equatorial reasoner would probably 
conceive that vegetation must cease, or gra- 
dually die away, as he should proceed to 
places further and further removed from the 
genial influence of the sun. The mean tempe- 
rature of his year being about 80 degrees, he 



64 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



would hardly suppose that any plants could 
subsist through a year, where the mean tem- 
perature was only 50, where the temperature of 
the summer quarter was only 64, and where the 
mean temperature of a whole quarter of the year 
was a very few degrees removed from that at 
which water becomes solid. He would sup- 
pose that scarcely any tree, shrub, or flower 
could exist in such a state of things, and so far 
as the plants of his own country are concerned 
he would judge rightly. 

But the countries further removed from the 
equator are not left thus unprovided. Instead 
of being scantily occupied by such of the tropi- 
cal plants as could support a stunted and preca- 
rious life in ungenial climes, they are abund- 
antly stocked with a multitude of vegetables 
which appear to be constructed expressly for 
them, inasmuch as these species can no more 
flourish at the equator than the equatorial species 
can in these temperate regions. And such new 
supplies thus adapted to new conditions, recur 
perpetually as we advance towards the apparently 
frozen and untenantable regions in the neigh- 
bourhood of the pole. Every zone has its pe- 
culiar vegetables ; and while we miss some, we 
find others make their appearance, as if to re- 
place those which are absent. 

If we look at the indigenous plants of Asia 
and Europe, we find such a succession as we 
have here spoken of. At the equator we find 



GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



60 



the natives of the Spice Islands, the clove and 
nutmeg trees, pepper and mace. Cinnamon 
bushes clothe the surface of Ceylon ;* the odori- 
ferous sandal wood, the ebony tree, the teak 
tree, the banyan, grow in the East Indies. In 
the same latitudes in Arabia the Happy we find 
balm, frankincense, and myrrh, the coffee tree, 
and the tamarind. But in these countries, at 
least in the plains, the trees and shrubs which 
decorate our more northerly climes are want- 
ing. And as we go northwards, at every step, 
we change the vegetable group, both by addi- 
tion and by subtraction. In the thickets to the 
west of the Caspian Sea we have the apricot, 
citron, peach, walnut. In the same latitude in 
Spain, Sicily, and Italy, we find the dwarf 
palm, the cypress, the chestnut, the cork tree : 
the orange and lemon tree perfume the air with 
their blossoms ; the myrtle and pomegranate 
grow wild among the rocks. We cross the 
Alps, and we find the vegetation which belongs 
to northern Europe, of which England affords 
an instance. The oak, the beech, and the elm 
are natives of Great Britain : the elm tree seen 
in Scotland, and in the north of England, is 
the wych elm. As we travel still further to the 
north the forests again change their character. 
In the northern provinces of the Russian empire 
are found forests of the various species of firs : 



* Barton, Geography of Plants. 
W. F 



66 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



the scotch and spruce fir, and the larch. In 
the Orkney Islands no tree is found but the 
hazel, which occurs again on the northern 
shores of the Baltic. As we proceed into colder 
regions we still find species which appear to 
have been made for these situations. The 
hoary or cold alder makes its appearance north 
of Stockholm : the sycamore and mountain 
ash accompany us to the head of the gulf of 
Bothnia : and as we leave this and traverse the 
^Dophrian range, we pass in succession the 
boundary lines of the spruce fir, the scotch fir, 
and those minute shrubs which botanists dis- 
tinguish as the dwarf birch and dwarf willow. 
Here, near to or within the arctic circle, we yet 
find wild flowers of great beauty : the mezereum, 
the yellow and white water lily, and the Euro- 
pean globe flower. And when these fail us, 
the reindeer moss still makes the country habit- 
able for animals and man. 

We have thus a variety in the laws of vege- 
table organization remarkably adapted to the 
variety of climates ; and by this adaptation the 
globe is clothed with vegetation and peopled 
with animals from pole to pole, while without 
such an adaptation vegetable and animal life 
must have been confined almost, or entirely, to 
some narrow zone on the earth's surface. We 
conceive that we see here the evidence of a wise 
and benevolent intention, overcoming the vary- 
ing difficulties, or employing the varying re- 



GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



67 



sources of the elements, with an inexhaustible 
fertility of contrivance, a constant tendency to 
diffuse life and well being. 

2. One of the great uses to which the vege- 
table wealth of the earth is applied, is the sup- 
port of man, whom it provides with food and 
clothing; and the adaptation of tribes of indi- 
genous vegetables to every climate has, we can- 
not but believe, a reference to the intention that 
the human race should be diffused over the 
whole globe. But this end is not answered by 
indigenous vegetables alone 5 and in the variety 
of vegetables capable of being cultivated with 
advantage in various countries, we conceive that 
we find evidence of an additional adaptation of 
the scheme of organic life to the system of the 
elements. 

The cultivated vegetables, which form the 
necessaries or luxuries of human life, are each 
confined within limits, narrow, when compared 
with the whole surface of the earth ; yet almost 
every part of the earth's surface is capable of 
being abundantly covered with one kind or 
other of these. When one class fails, another 
appears in its place. Thus corn, wine, and oil, 
have each its boundaries. Wheat extends 
through the old Continent, from England to 
Thibet : but it stops soon in going northwards, 
and is not found to succeed in the west of Scot- 
land. Nor does it thrive better in the torrid 
zone than in the polar regions : within the tro- 



63 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

pics, wheat, barley and oats are not cultivated , 
excepting in situations considerably above the 
level of the sea : the inhabitants of those coun- 
tries have other species of grain, or other food. 
The cultivation of the vine succeeds only in 
countries where the annual temperature is be- 
tween 50 and 63 degrees. In both hemispheres? 
the profitable culture of this plant ceases within 
30 degrees of the equator, unless in elevated 
situations, or in islands, as Teneriffe. The limits 
of the cultivation of maize and of olives in France 
are parallel to those which bound the vine and 
corn in succession to the north. In the north 
of Italy, west of Milan, we first meet with the 
cultivation of rice ; which extends over all the 
southern part of Asia, wherever the land can 
be at pleasure covered with water. In great 
part of Africa millet is one of the principal 
kinds of grain. 

Cotton is cultivated to latitude 40 in the new 
world, but extends to Astrachan in latitude 46 
in the old. The sugar cane, the plantain, the 
mulberry, the betel nut, the indigo tree, the tea 
tree, repay the labours of the cultivator in India 
and China ; and several of these plants have 
been transferred, with success, to America and 
the West Indies. In equinoctial America a 
great number of inhabitants find abundant nou- 
rishment on a narrow space cultivated with 
plantain, cassava yams, and maize. The culti- 
vation of the bread fruit tree begins in the Ma- 
nillas, and extends through the Pacific ; the 



GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



69 



sago palm is grown in the Moluccas, the cab- 
bage tree in the Pelew islands. 

In this manner the various tribes of men are 
provided with vegetable food. Some however 
live on their cattle, and thus make the produce 
of the earth only mediately subservient to their 
wants. Thus the Tatar tribes depend on their 
flocks and herds for food : the taste for the flesh 
of the horse seems to belong to the Mongols, 
Fins, and other descendants of the ancient Scy- 
thians : the locust eaters are found now, as for- 
merly, in Africa. 

Many of these differences depend upon cus- 
tom, soil, and other causes with which we do 
not here meddle ; but many are connected with 
climate : and the variety of the resources which 
man thus possesses, arises from the variety of 
constitution belonging to cultivable vegetables, 
through which one is fitted to one range of cli- 
mate, and another to another. We conceive 
that this variety and succession of fitness for 
cultivation, shows undoubted marks of a most 
foreseeing and benevolent design in the Creator 
of man and of the world. 

3. By differences in vegetables of the kind 
we have above described, the sustentation and 
gratification of man's physical nature is co- 
piously provided for. But there is another cir- 
cumstance, a result of the difference of the na- 
tive products of different regions, and therefore 
a consequence of that difference of climate on 
which the difference of native products de- 



70 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



pends,* which appears to be worthy our notice. 
The difference of the productions of different 
countries has a bearing not only upon the phy- 
sical, but upon the social and moral condition 
of man. 

The intercourse of nations in the way of dis- 
covery, colonization, commerce ; the study of 
the natural history, manners, institutions of 
foreign countries ; lead to most numerous and 
important results. Without dwelling upon this 
subject, it will probably be allowed that such 
intercourse has a great influence upon the com- 
forts, the prosperity, the arts, the literature, the 
power, of the nations which thus communicate. 
Now the variety of the productions of different 
lands supplies both the stimulus to this inter- 
course, and the instruments by which it produces 
its effects. The desire to possess the objects or 
the knowledge which foreign countries alone 
can supply, urges the trader, the traveller, the 
discoverer to compass land and sea ; and the 
progress of the arts and advantages of civiliza- 
tion consists almost entirely in the cultivation, 
the use, the improvement of that which has been 
received from other countries. 

This is the case to a much greater extent than 
might at first sight be supposed. Where man is 
active as a cultivator, he scarcely ever bestows 
much of his care on those vegetables which the 

* It will be observed, that it is not here asserted that the 
difference of native products depends on the difference of 
climate alone*, . 



GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



land would produce in a state of nature. He 
does not select some of the plants of the soil and 
improve them by careful culture, but, for the 
most part, he expels the native possessors of the 
land, and introduces colonies of strangers. 

Thus, to take the condition of our own part 
of the globe as an example ; scarcely one of the 
plants which occupy our fields and gardens is 
indigenous to the country. The walnut and 
the peach come to us from Persia ; the apricot 
from Armenia : from Asia Minor, and Syria, 
we have the cherry tree, the fig, the pear, the 
pomegranate, the olive, the plum, and the mul- 
berry. The vine which is now cultivated is not 
a native of Europe ; it is found wild on the 
shores of the Caspian, in Armenia and Cara- 
mania. The most useful species of plants, the 
cereal vegetables, are certainly strangers, though 
their birth place seems to be an impenetrable 
secret. Some have fancied that barley is found 
wild on the banks of the Semara, in Tartary, 
rye in Crete, wheat at Baschkiros, in Asia ; but 
this is held by the best botanists to be very 
doubtful. The potatoe, which has been so 
widely diffused over the world in modern times, 
and has added so much to the resources of life 
in many countries, has been found equally dif- 
ficult to trace back to its wild condition.* 

* Humboldt, Geog. des Plantes, p. 29. It appears, how- 
ever, to be now ascertained that the edible potatoe is found 
wild in the neighbourhood of Valparaiso. Mr. Sabine in the 
Horticultural Trans, vol. v. p. 249. 



72 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



Thus widely are spread the traces of the con* 
nexion of the progress of civilization with na- 
tional intercourse. In our own country a higher 
state of the arts of life is marked by a more 
ready and extensive adoption of foreign produc- 
tions. Our fields are covered with herbs from 
Holland, and roots from Germany ; with Fle- 
mish farming and Swedish turnips ; our hills 
with forests of the firs of Norway. The chest- 
nut and poplar of the south of Europe adorn our 
lawns, and below them flourish shrubs and 
flowers from every clime in profusion. In the 
mean time Arabia improves our horses, China 
our pigs, North America our poultry, Spain our 
sheep, and almost every country sends its dog. 
The products which are ingredients in our lux- 
uries, and which we cannot naturalize at home, 
we raise in our colonies ; the cotton, coffee, 
sugar of the east are thus transplanted to the 
farthest west ; and man lives in the middle of 
a rich and varied abundance, which depends on 
the facility with which plants and animals and 
modes of culture can be transferred into lands 
far removed from those in which nature had 
placed them. And this plenty and variety of 
material comforts is the companion and the 
mark of advantages and improvements in social 
life, of progress in art and science, of activity 
of thought, of energy of purpose, and of ascen- 
dency of character. 

The differences in the productions of different 
countries which lead to the habitual intercourse 



GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



T6 



of nations, and through this to the benefits which 
we have thus briefly noticed, do not all depend 
upon the differences of temperature and climate 
alone. But these differences are among the 
causes, and are some of the most important 
causes, or conditions, of the variety of products ; 
and thus that arrangement of the earth's form 
and motion, from which the different climates of 
different places arise, is connected with the social 
and moral welfare and advancement of man. 

We conceive that this connexion, though 
there must be to our apprehension much that is 
indefinite and uncertain in tracing its details, is 
yet a point where we may perceive the profound 
and comprehensive relations established by the 
counsel and foresight of a wise and good Creator 
of the world and of man, by whom the progress 
and elevation of the human species was neither 
uncontemplated nor uncared for. 

4. We have traced, in the variety of organized 
beings, an adaptation to the variety of climates, 
a provision for the sustentation of man all over 
the globe, and an instrument for the promotion 
of civilization and many attendant benefits. We 
have not considered this variety as itself a pur- 
pose which we can perceive or understand with- 
out reference to some ulterior end. Many per- 
sons, however, and especially those who are 
already in the habit of referring the world to its 
Creator, will probably see something admirable 
in itself in this vast variety of created things. 



74 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

There is indeed something well fitted to produce 
and confirm a reverential wonder, in these ap- 
parently inexhaustible stores of new forms of 
being and modes of existence ; the fixity of the 
laws of each class, its distinctness from all others, 
its relations to many. Structures and habits 
and characters are exhibited, which are con- 
nected and distinguished according to every con- 
ceivable degree of subordination and analogy, 
in their resemblances and in their differences. 
Every new country we explore presents us with 
new combinations, where the possible cases 
seemed to be exhausted ; and with new resem- 
blances and differences constructed as if to 
elude what conjecture might have hit upon, by 
proceeding from the old ones. Most of those 
who have any large portion of nature brought 
under their notice in this point of view, are led 
to feel that there is, in such a creation, a har- 
mony, a beauty, and a dignity, of which the 
impression is irresistible ; which would have 
been wanting in any more uniform and limited 
system such as we might try to imagine ; and 
which of itself gives to the arrangements, by 
which such a variety on the earth's surface is 
produced, the character of well devised means 
to a worthy end. 



75 



Chapter VIII. 
The Constituents of Climate. 

E have spoken of the steady average of 
the climate at each place, of the differ- 
ence of this average at different places, and of 
the adaptation of organized beings to this cha- 
racter in the laws of the elements by which they 
are effected. But this steadiness in the general 
effect of the elements, is the result of an ex- 
tremely complex and extensive machinery. 
Climate, in its wider sense, is not one single 
agent, but is the aggregate result of a great 
number of different agents, governed by different 
laws, producing effects of various kinds. The 
steadiness of this compound agency is not the 
steadiness of a permanent condition, like that of 
a body at rest ; but it is the steadiness of a state 
of constant change and movement, succession 
and alternation, seeming accident and irregu- 
larity. It is a perpetual repose, combined with 
a perpetual motion ; and invariable average of 
most variable quantities. Now, the manner in 
which such a state of things is produced, de- 
serves, we conceive, a closer consideration. It 
may be useful to show how the particular laws 
of the action of each of the elements of climate 




76 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

are so adjusted that they do not disturb this 
general constancy. 

The principal constituents of climate are the 
following : — the temperature of the earth, of the 
water, of the air : — the distribution of the aque- 
ous vapour contained in the atmosphere : — the 
winds and rains by which the equilibrium of the 
atmosphere is restored when it is in any degree 
disturbed. The effects of light, of electricity, 
probably of other causes also, are no doubt im- 
portant in the economy of the vegetable world, 
but these agencies have not been reduced by 
scientific inquiries to such laws as to admit of 
their being treated with the same exactness and 
certainty which we can obtain in the case of 
those first mentioned. 

We shall proceed to trace some of the pecu- 
liarities in the laws of the different physical 
agents which are in action at the earth's surface, 
and the manner in which these peculiarities 
bear upon the general result. 

The Laws of Heat with respect to the Earth, 

One of the main causes which determine the 
temperature of each climate is the effect of the 
sun's rays on the solid mass of the earth. The 
laws of this operation have been recently made 
out with considerable exactness, experimentally 
by Leslie, theoretically by Fourrier, and by 
other inquirers. The theoretical inquiries have 



LAWS OF HEAT. THE EARTH. 11 

required the application of very complex and 
abstruse mathematical investigations; but the 
general character of the operation may, perhaps, 
be made easily intelligible. 

The earth, like all solid bodies, transmits into 
its interior the impressions of heat which it re- 
ceives at the surface ; and throws off the super- 
fluous heat from its surface into the surrounding 
space. These processes are called conduction 
and radiation , and have each their ascertained 
mathematical laws. 

By the laws of conduction, the daily impres- 
sions of heat which the earth receives, follow 
each other into the interior of the mass, like the 
waves which start from the edge of a canal ;* and 
like them, become more and more faint as they 
proceed, till they melt into the general level of 
the internal temperature. The heat thus trans- 
mitted is accumulated in the interior of the 
earth, as in a reservoir, and flows from one part 
to another of this reservoir. The parts of the 
earth near the equator are more heated by the 
sun than other parts, and on this account there 
is a perpetual internal conduction of heat from 

* The resemblance consists in this ; that we have a strip 
of greater temperature accompanied by a strip of smaller 
temperature, these strips arising from the diurnal and noc- 
turnal impressions respectively, and being in motion ; as in 
the waves of a canal, we have a moving strip of greater ele- 
vation accompanied by a strip of smaller elevation. We do 
not here refer to any hypothetical undulations in the fluid 
matter of heat. 



78 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

the equatorial to other parts of the sphere. And 
as all parts of the surface throw off heat by ra- 
diation, in the polar regions, where the surface 
receives little in return from the sun, a constant 
waste is produced. There is thus from the 
polar parts a perpetual dispersion of heat in the 
surrounding space, which is supplied by a per- 
petual internal flow from the equator towards 
each pole. 

Here, then, is a kind of circulation of heat ; 
and the quantity and rapidity of this circulation, 
determine the quantity of heat in the solid part 
of the earth, and in each portion of it; and 
through this, the mean temperature belonging 
to each point on its surface. 

If the earth conducted heat more rapidly than 
it does, the inequalities of temperature would 
be more quickly balanced, and the temperature 
of the ground in different parts of the globe of 
the earth, (below the reach of annual and diur- 
nal variations) would differ less than it does. If 
the surface radiated more rapidly than it does, 
the flow of heat from the polar regions would 
increase, and the temperature of the interior of 
the globe would find a lower level ; the differ- 
ences of temperature in different latitudes would 
increase, but the mean temperature of the globe 
would diminish. 

There is nothing which, so far as we can per- 
ceive, determines necessarily, either the con- 
ducting or the radiating power of the earth to 



LAWS OF HEAT. THE EARTH. 7 9 

its present value. The measures of such powers, 
in different substances, differ very widely. If 
the earth were a globe of pure iron, it would 
conduct heat, probably, twenty times as well as- 
it does ; if its surface were polished iron, it 
would only radiate one-sixth as much as it does. 
Changes in the amount of the conduction and 
radiation far less than these, would, probably, 
subvert the whole thermal constitution of the 
earth, and make it uninhabitable by any of its 
present vegetable or animal tenants. 

One of the results of the laws of heat, as they 
exist in the globe, is, that, by their action, the 
thermal state tends to a limited condition, which, 
once reached, remains constant and steady, as 
it now is. The oscillations or excursions from 
the mean condition, produced by any temporary 
cause, are rapidly suppressed ; the deviations of 
seasons from their usual standard produce only 
a small and transient effect. The impression of 
an extremely hot day upon the ground melts 
almost immediately into the average internal 
heat. The effect of a hot summer, in like man- 
ner, is soon lost in its progress through the 
globe. If this were otherwise, if the inequalities 
and oscillations of heat went on, through the 
interior of the earth, retaining the same value, 
or becoming larger and larger, we might have 
the extreme heats or colds of one place making 
their appearance at another place after a long 
interval ; like a conflagration which creeps along 



80 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

a street and bursts out at a point remote from 
its origin. 

It appears, therefore, that both the present 
differences of climate, and the steadiness of the 
average at each place, depend upon the form of 
the present laws of heat, and on the arbitrary 
magnitudes which determine the rate of conduc- 
tion and radiation. The laws are such as to 
secure us from increasing and destructive in- 
equalities of heat 5 the arbitrary magnitudes are 
data to which the organic world is adjusted. 



Chapter IX. 
The Laws of Heat with respect to Water. 

HE manner in which heat is transmitted 
through fluids is altogether different from 
the mode in which it passes through solids ; 
and hence the waters of the earth's surface pro- 
duce peculiar effects upon its condition as to 
temperature. Moreover, water is susceptible of 
evaporation in a degree depending upon the 
increase of heat ; and in consequence of this 
property it has most extensive and important 
functions to discharge in the economy of nature. 
We will consider some of the offices of this 
fluid. 

l. Heat is communicated through water, net 




LAWS OF HEAT. WATER. 



31 



by being conducted from one part of the fluid to 
another, as in solid bodies, but (at least princi- 
pally) by being carried with the parts of the 
fluid by means of an intestine motion. Water 
expands and becomes lighter by heat, and, there- 
fore, if the upper parts be cooled below the sub- 
jacent temperature, this upper portion will be- 
come heavier than that below, bulk for bulk, 
and will descend through it, while the lower 
portion rises to take the upper place. In this 
manner the colder parts descend, and the 
warmer parts ascend by contrary currents, and 
by their interchange and mixture, reduce the 
whole to a temperature at least as low as that 
of the surface. And this equalization of tem- 
perature by means of such currents, is an ope- 
ration of a much more rapid nature than the 
slow motion of conduction by which heat creeps 
through a solid body. Hence, alternations of 
heat and cold, as day and night, summer and 
winter, produce in water inequalities of tempe- 
rature much smaller than those which occur in 
a solid body. The heat communicated is less, 
for transparent fluids imbibe heat very slowly ; 
and the cold impressed on the surface is soon 
diffused through the mass by internal circula- 
tion. 

Hence it follows that the ocean, w^hich covers 
so large a portion of the earth, and affects the 
temperature of the whole surface by its influence, 
produces the effect of making the alternations of 

w. G 



82 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



heat and cold much less violent than they would 
be if this covering were removed. The differ- 
ent temperatures of its upper and lower parts 
produce a current which draws the sea, and by 
means of the sea, the air, towards the mean tem- 
perature. And this kind of circulation is pro- 
duced, not only between the upper and lower 
parts, but also between distant tracts of the 
ocean. The great Gulf Stream which rushes 
out of the gulf of Mexico, and runs across the 
Atlantic to the western shores of Europe, carries 
with it a portion of the tropical heat into the 
northern regions : and the returning current 
which descends along the coast of Africa, tends 
to cool the parts nearer the equator. Great as 
the difference of temperature is in different cli- 
mates, it would be still greater if there were not 
this equalizing and moderating power exerted 
constantly over the whole surface. Without 
this influence, it is probable that the two polar 
portions of the earth, which are locked in per- 
petual ice and snow, and almost destitute of 
life, would be much increased. 

We find an illustration of this effect of the 
ocean on temperature, in the peculiarities of the 
climates of maritime tracts and islands. The 
climate of such portions of the earth, corrected 
in some measure by the temperature of the 
neighbouring sea, is more equable than that of 
places in the same latitudes differently situated. 
London is cooler in summer and warmer in 
winter than Paris. 



LAWS OF HEAT. WATER. 



S3 



2. Water expands by heat and contracts by 
cold, as has been already said ; and in conse- 
quence of this property, the coldest portions of 
the fluid generally occupy the lower parts. The 
continued progress of cold produces congelation. 
If, therefore, the law just mentioned had been 
strictly true, the lower parts of water would have 
been first frozen ; and being once frozen, hardly 
any heat applied at the surface could have 
melted them, for the warm fluid could not have 
descended through the colder parts. This is so 
far the case, that in a vessel containing ice at 
the bottom and water at the top, Rumford made 
the upper fluid boil without thawing the con- 
gealed cake below. 

Now, a law of water with respect to heat 
operating in this manner, would have been very 
inconvenient if it had prevailed in our lakes 
and seas. They would all have had a bed of 
ice, increasing with every occasion, till the 
whole was frozen. We could have no bodies of 
water, except such pools on the surfaces of 
these icy reservoirs as the summer sun could 
thaw, to be again frozen to the bottom with 
the first frosty night. The law of the regular 
contraction of water by cold till it became ice, 
would, therefore, be destructive of all the utility 
of our seas and lakes. How is this inconvenience 
obviated ? 

It is obviated by a modification of the law 
which takes place when the temperature ap- 



84 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



proaches this limit. Water contracts by the 
increase of cold, till we come near the freezing 
temperature ; but then, by a further increase of 
cold, it contracts no more, but expands till the 
point at which it becomes ice. It contracts in 
cooling down to 40 degrees of Fahrenheit's ther- 
mometer; in cooling further it expands, and 
when cooled to 32 degrees, it freezes. Hence 
the greatest density of the fluid is at 40 degrees, 
and water of this temperature, or near it, will 
lie at the bottom with cooler water or with ice 
float iiig above it. However much the surface 
be cooled, water colder than 40 cannot descend 
to displace water warmer than itself. Hence 
we can never have ice formed at the bottom of 
deep water. In approaching the freezing point, 
the coldest water will rise to the surface, and 
the congelation will take place there ; and the 
ice so formed will remain at the surface, exposed 
to the warmth of the sun-beams and the air, and 
will not survive any long continuance of such 
action. 

Another peculiarity in the laws which regu- 
late the action of cold on water is, that in the 
very act of freezing a further sudden and con- 
siderable expansion takes place. Many persons 
will have known instances of vessels burst by 
the freezing of water in them. The consequence 
of this expansion is, that the specific gravity of 
ice is less than that of water of any temperature ; 
and it therefore always floats in the unfrozen 



LAWS OF HEAT. WATER. 



85 



fluid. If this expansion of crystallization did 
not exist, ice would float in water which was 
below 40 degrees, but would sink when the 
fluid was above that temperature : as the case 
is, it floats under all circumstances. The icy 
remnants of the effects of winter, which the 
river carries down its stream, are visible on its 
surface till they melt away ; and the icebergs 
which are detached from the shores of the polar 
seas, drift along, exposed to the sun and air, 
as well as to the water in which they are 
immersed. 

These laws of the effect of temperature on 
water are truly remarkable in their adaptation 
to the beneficial course of things at the earth's 
surface. Water contracts by cold ; it thus 
equalizes the temperature of various times and 
places ; but if its contraction were continued 
all the way to the freezing point, it would bind 
a great part of the earth in fetters of ice. The 
contraction then is here replaced by expansion, in 
a manner which but slightly modifies the former 
effects, while it completely obviates the bad con- 
sequences. The further expansion which takes 
place at the point of freezing, still further faci- 
litates the rapid removal of the icy chains, in 
which parts of the earth's surface are at certain 
seasons bound. 

We do not know how far these laws of expan- 
sion are connected with and depend on more 
remote and general properties of this'fluid, or of 



86 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



all fluids. But we have no reason to believe 
that, by whatever means they operate, they are 
not laws selected from among other laws which 
might exist, as in fact for other fluids other laws 
do exist. And we have all the evidence, which 
the most remarkable furtherance of important 
purposes can give us, that they are selected, and 
selected with a beneficial design. 

3. As water becomes ice by cold, it becomes 
steam by heat. In common language, steam is 
the name given to the vapour of hot water ; but 
in fact a vapour or steam rises from water at 
all temperatures, however low, and even from 
ice. The expansive force of this vapour in- 
creases rapidly as the heat increases ; so that 
when we reach the heat of boiling water, it ope- 
rates in a far more striking manner than when 
it is colder ; but in all cases the surface of water 
is covered with an atmosphere of aqueous vapour, 
the pressure or tension of which is limited by 
the temperature of the water. To each degree 
of pressure in steam there is a constituent tem- 
perature corresponding. If the surface of water 
is not pressed by vapour with the force thus 
corresponding to its temperature, an immediate 
evaporation will supply the deficiency. We can 
compare the tension of such vapour with that of 
our common atmosphere ; the pressure of the 
latter is measured by the barometrical column, 
about thirty inches of mercury ; that of watery 
vapour is equal to one inch of mercury at the 



LAWS OF HEAT. WATER. 



87 



constituent temperature of 80 degrees, and to 
one-fifth of an inch, at the temperature of 32 
degrees. 

Hence, if that part of the atmosphere which 
consists of common air were annihilated, there 
would still remain an atmosphere of aqueous 
vapour, arising from the waters and moist parts 
of the earth ; and in the existing state of things 
this vapour rises in the atmosphere of dry air. 
Its distribution and effects are materially in- 
fluenced by the vehicle in which it is thus car- 
ried, as we shall hereafter notice ; but at present 
we have to observe the exceeding utility of water 
in this shape. We remark how suitable and 
indispensable to the well-being of the creation 
it is, that the fluid should possess the pro- 
perty of assuming such a form under such cir- 
cumstances. 

The moisture which floats in the atmosphere 
is of most essential use to vegetable life.* " The 
leaves of living plants appear to act upon this 
vapour in its elastic form, and to absorb it. 
Some vegetables increase in weight from this 
cause when suspended in the atmosphere and 
unconnected with the soil, as the house-leek and 
the aloe. In very intense heats, and when the 
soil is dry, the life of plants seems to be preserved 
by the absorbent power of their leaves." It 
follows from what has already been said, that, 



* Loudon, 1219. 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



with an increasing heat of the atmosphere, an 
increasing quantity of vapour will rise into it, 
if supplied from any quarter. Hence it appears 
that aqueous vapour is most abundant in the 
atmosphere when it is most needed for the pur- 
poses of life ; and that when other sources of 
moisture are cut off, this is most copious. 

4. Clouds are produced by aqueous vapour 
when it returns to the state of water. This pro- 
cess is condensation, the reverse of evaporation. 
When vapour exists in the atmosphere, if in any 
manner the temperature becomes lower than the 
constituent temperature, requisite for the main- 
tenance of the vapoury state, some of the steam 
will be condensed and will become water. It is 
in this manner that the curl of steam from the 
spout of a boiling tea-kettle becomes visible, 
being cooled down as it rushes to the air. The 
steam condenses into a fine watery powder, 
which is carried about by the little aerial cur- 
rents. Clouds are of the same nature with such 
curls, the condensation being generally produced 
when air, charged with aqueous vapour, is mixed 
with a colder current, or has its temperature 
diminished in any other manner. 

Clouds, while they retain that shape, are of 
the most essential use to vegetable and animal 
life. They moderate the fervour of the sun, in 
a manner agreeable, to a greater or less degree, 
in all climates, and grateful no less to vegetables 
than to animals. Duhamel says that plants 



LAWS OF HEAT. WATER. 



•S3 



grow more during a week of cloudy weather 
than a month of dry and hot. It has been ob- 
served that vegetables are far more refreshed by 
being watered in cloudy than in clear weather. 
In the latter case, probably the supply of fluid 
is too rapidly carried off by evaporation. Clouds 
also moderate the alternations of temperature, 
by checking the radiation from the earth. The 
boldest nights are those which occur under a 
cloudless winter sky. 

The uses of clouds, therefore, in this stage of 
their history, are by no means inconsiderable, 
and seem to indicate to us that the laws of their 
formation were constructed with a view to the 
purposes of organized life. 

5. Clouds produce rain. In the formation of 
a cloud the precipitation of moisture probably 
forms a fine watery powder, which remains sus- 
pended in the air in consequence of the minute- 
ness of its particles : but if from any cause the 
precipitation is collected in larger portions, and 
becomes drops, these descend by their weight 
and produce a shower. 

Thus rain is ' another of the consequences of 
the properties of water with respect to heat; its 
uses are the results of the laws of evaporation 
and condensation. These uses, with reference 
to plants, are too obvious and too numerous to 
be described. It is evident that on its quantity 
and distribution depend in a great measure the 
prosperity of the vegetable kingdom : and differ- 



90 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

ent climates are fitted for different productions, 
no less by the relations of dry weather and 
showers, than by those of hot and cold. 

6. Returning back still further in the changes 
which cold can produce on water, we come to 
snow and ice : snow being apparently frozen 
cloud or vapour, aggregated by a confused ac- 
tion of crystalline laws ; and ice being water in 
its fluid state, solidified by the same crystalline 
forces. The impression of these agents on the 
animal feelings is generally unpleasant, and we 
are in the habit of considering them as symptoms 
of the power of winter to interrupt that state of 
the elements in which they are subservient to 
life. Yet, even in this form, they are not with- 
out their uses.* " Snow and ice are bad con- 
ductors of cold,; and when the ground is co- 
vered with snow, or the surface of the soil or of 
water is frozen, the roots or bulbs of plants be- 
neath are protected by the congealed water from 
the influence of the atmosphere, the temperature 
of which, in northern winters, is usually very 
much below the freezing point ; and this water 
becomes the first nourishment of the plant in 
early spring. The expansion of water during 
its congelation, at which time its volume in- 
creases one-twelfth, and its contraction in bulk 
during a thaw, tend to pulverize the soil, to 
separate its parts from each other, and to make 



* Loudon, 1214. 



LAWS OF HEAT. WATER. 



01 



it more permeable to the influence of the air." 
In consequence of the same slowness in the con- 
duction of heat which snow thus possesses, the 
arctic traveller finds his bed of snow of no into- 
lerable coldness ; the Esquimaux is sheltered 
from the inclemency of the season in his snow 
hut, and travels rapidly and agreeably over the 
frozen surface of the sea. The uses of those ar- 
rangements, which at first appear productive 
only of pain and inconvenience, are well suited 
to give confidence and hope to our researches 
for such usefulness in every part of the creation. 
They have thus a peculiar value in adding con- 
nexion and universality to our perception of 
beneficial design. 

7. There is a peculiar circumstance still to be 
noticed in the changes from ice to water and from 
water to steam. These changes take place at a 
particular and invariable degree of heat; yet they 
do not take place suddenly when we increase the 
heat to this degree. This is a very curious ar- 
rangement. The temperature makes a stand, as 
it were, at the point where thaw, and where 
boiling take place. It is necessary to apply a 
considerable quantity of heat to produce these 
effects; all which heat disappears, or becomes 
latent, as it is called. We cannot raise the tem- 
perature of a thawing mass of ice till we have 
thawed the whole. We cannot raise the tempe- 
rature of boiling water, or of steam rising from 
it, till we have converted all the water into 



92 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

steam. Any heat that we apply while these 
changes are going on is absorbed in producing 
the changes. 

The consequences of this property of latent 
heat are very important. It is on this account 
that the changes now spoken of necessarily oc- 
cupy a considerable time. Each part in succes- 
sion must have a proper degree of heat applied 
to it. If it were otherwise, thaw and evapora- 
tion must be instantaneous : at the first touch of 
warmth, all the snow which lies on the roofs of 
our houses would descend like a water spout into 
the streets : all that which rests on the ground 
would rush like an inundation into the water 
courses. The hut of the Esquimaux would va- 
nish like a house in a pantomime : the icy floor 
of the river would be gone without giving any 
warning to the skater or the traveller : and 
when, in heating our water, we reached the 
boiling point, the whole fluid would " flash into 
steam," (to use the expression of engineers,) and 
dissipate itself in the atmosphere, or settle in 
dew on the neighbouring objects. 

It is obviously necessary for the purposes of 
human life, that these changes should be of a 
more gradual and manageable kind than such 
as we have now described. Yet this gradual 
progress of freezing and thawing, of evapora- 
tion and condensation, is produced, so far as 
we can discover, by a particular contrivance. 
Like the freezing of water from the top, or the 



LAWS OF HEAT. WATER. 



93 



floating of ice, the moderation of the rate of 
these changes seems to be the result of a viola- 
tion of a law : that is, the simple rule regarding 
the effects of change of temperature, which at 
first sight appears to be the law, and which, 
from its simplicity, would seem to us the most 
obvious law for these as well as other cases, is 
modified at certain critical points, so as to pro- 
duce these advantageous effects :— why may we 
not say in order to produce such effects ? 

8. Another office of water which it discharges 
by means of its relations to heat, is that of sup- 
plying our springs. There can be no doubt that 
the old hypotheses, which represent springs as 
drawing their supplies from large subterranean 
reservoirs of water, or from the sea by a process 
of subterraneous filtration, are erroneous and 
untenable. The quantity of evaporation from 
water and from wet ground is found to be 
amply sufficient to supply the requisite drain. 
Mr. Dalton calculated* that the quantity of 
rain which falls in England is thirty-six inches 
a year. Of this he reckoned that thirteen inches 
flow off to the sea by the rivers, and that the 
remaining twenty-three inches are raised again 
from the ground by evaporation. The thirteen 
inches of water are of course supplied by evapo- 
ration from the sea, and are carried back to the 
land through the atmosphere. Vapour is perpe- 

* Manchester Memoirs, v. 357. 



94 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

tually rising from the ocean, and is condensed 
in the hills and high lands, and through their 
pores and crevices descends, till it is deflected, 
collected, and conducted out to the day, by 
some stratum or channel which is watertight. 
The condensation which takes place in the 
higher parts of a country, may easily be recog- 
nised in the mists and rains which are the fre- 
quent occupants of such regions. The coldness 
of the atmosphere and other causes precipitate 
the moisture in clouds and showers, and in the 
former as well as in the latter shape, it is con- 
densed and absorbed by the cool ground. Thus 
a perpetual and compound circulation of the 
waters is kept up ; a narrower circle between 
the evaporation and precipitation of the land 
itself, the rivers and streams only occasionally 
and partially forming a portion of the circuit ; 
and a wider interchange between the sea and 
the lands which feed the springs, the water 
ascending perpetually by a thousand currents 
through the air, and descending by the gra- 
dually converging branches of the rivers, till it 
is again returned into the great reservoir of the 
ocean. 

In every country, these two portions 'of the 
aqueous circulation have their regular, and 
nearly constant, proportion. In this kingdom 
the relative quantities are, as we have said, 23 
and 13. A due distribution of these circulating 



LAWS OF HEAT. WATER. 



bo- 



fluids in each country appears to be necessary 
to its organic health; to the habits of vegetables, 
and of man. We have every reason to believe 
that it is kept up from year to year as steadily 
as the circulation of the blood in the veins and 
arteries of man. It is maintained by a ma- 
chinery very different, indeed, from that of the 
human system, but apparently as well, and, 
therefore, we may say as clearly, as that, 
adapted to its purposes. 

By this machinery, we have a connexion es- 
tablished between the atmospheric changes of 
remote countries. Rains in England are often 
introduced by a south-east w r ind. " Vapour 
brought to us by such a wind, must have been 
generated in countries to the south and east of 
our island. It is therefore, probably, in the 
extensive valleys watered by the Meuse, the 
Moselle, and the Rhine, if not from the more 
distant Elbe, with the Oder and the Weser, 
that the water rises, in the midst of sunshine, 
which is soon afterwards to form our clouds, and 
pour down our thunder-showers." " Drought 
and sunshine in one part of Europe may be as 
necessary to the production of a wet season in 
another, as it is on the great scale of the conti- 
nents of Africa and South America ; where the 
plains, during one half the year, are burnt up, 
to feed the springs of the mountains ; which in 
their turn contribute to inundate the fertile val- 



96 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

leys and prepare them for a luxuriant vegeta- 
tion."* The properties of water which regard 
heat make one vast watering -engine of the at- 
mosphere. 



Chapter X. 
The Laws of Heat with respect to Air. 

E have seen in the preceding chapter, how 
many and how important are the offices 
discharged by the aqueous part of the atmos- 
phere. The aqueous part is, however, a very 
small part only : it may vary, perhaps, from less 
than l-100dth to nearly as much as l-20th in 
weight, of the whole aerial ocean. We have to 
offer some considerations with regard to the 
remainder of the mass. 

l. In the first place we may observe that the 
aerial atmosphere is necessary as a vehicle for 
the aqueous vapour. Salutary as is the opera- 
tion of this last element to the whole organized 
creation, it is a substance which would not have 
answered its purposes if it had been administered 
pure. It requires to be diluted and associated 
with dry air, to make it serviceable. A little 
consideration will show this. 

We can suppose the earth with no atmosphere 

* Howard on the Climate of London, vol. ii. pp. 216, 217. 




LAWS OF HEAT. AIR. 



97 



except the vapour which arises from its watery 
parts : and if we suppose also the equatorial 
parts of the globe to be hot, and the polar parts 
cold, we may easily see what would be the 
consequence. The waters at the equator, and 
near the equator, would produce steam of greater 
elasticity, rarity, and temperature, than that 
which occupies the regions further polewards; 
and such steam, as it came in contact with the 
colder vapour of a higher latitude, would be 
precipitated into the form of water. Hence 
there would be a perpetual current of steam 
from the equatorial parts towards each pole, 
which would be condensed, would fall to the 
surface, and flow back to the equator in the form 
of fluid. We should have a circulation which 
might be regarded as a species of regulated dis- 
tillation.* On a globe so constituted, the sky of 
the equatorial zone would be perpetually cloud- 
less 5 but in all other latitudes w r e should have 
an uninterrupted shroud of clouds, fogs, rains, 
and, near the poles, a continual fall of snow. 
This would be balanced by a constant flow of the 
currents of the ocean from each pole towards the 
equator. We should have an excessive circula- 
tion of moisture, but no sunshine, and probably 
only minute changes in the intensity and appear- 
ances of one eternal drizzle or shower. 

It is plain that this state of things would but 



* Daniell. Meteor. Ess. p. 56. 
W. H 



98 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

ill answer the ends of vegetable and animal life : 
so that even if the lungs of animals and the 
leaves of plants were so constructed as to breathe 
steam instead of air, an atmosphere of unmixed 
steam would deprive those creatures of most of 
the other external conditions of their well-being. 

The real state of things which we enjoy, the 
steam being mixed in our breath and in our sky 
in a moderate quantity, gives rise to results very 
different from those which have been described. 
The machinery by which these results are pro- 
duced is not a little curious. It is, in fact, the 
machinery of the weather, and therefore the 
reader will not be surprised to find it both com- 
plex and apparently uncertain in its working. 
At the same time some of the general principles 
which govern it seem now to be pretty well 
made out, and they offer no small evidence of 
beneficent arrangement. 

Besides our atmosphere of aqueous vapour, 
we have another and far larger atmosphere of 
common air ; a permanently elastic fluid, that is, 
one which is not condensed into a liquid form by 
pressure or cold, such as it is exposed to in the 
order of natural events. The pressure of the dry 
air is about 29 J inches of mercury ; that of the 
watery vapour, perhaps, half an inch. Now if 
we had the earth quite dry, and covered with an 
atmosphere of dry air, we can trace in a great 
measure what would be the results, supposing 
still the equatorial zone tD be hot, and the tern- 



LAWS OF HEAT. AIR. 



perature of the surface to decrease perpetually 
as we advance into higher latitudes. The air 
at the equator would be rarefied by the heat, and 
would be perpetually displaced below by the 
denser portions which belonged to cooler lati- 
tudes. We should have a current of air from 
the equator to the poles in the higher regions of 
the atmosphere, and at the surface a returning 
current setting towards the equator to fill up the 
void so created. Such aerial currents, combined 
with the rotatory motion of the earth, would pro- 
duce oblique winds ; and we have in fact in- 
stances of winds so produced, in the trade winds, 
which between the tropics blow constantly from 
the quarters between east and north, and are, we 
know, balanced by opposite currents in higher 
regions. The effect of a heated surface of land 
would be the same as that of the heated zone of 
the equator, and would attract to it a sea breeze 
during the day time, a phenomenon, as we also 
know, of perpetual occurrence. 

Now a mass of dry air of such a character as 
this, is by far the dominant part of our atmos- 
phere ; and hence carries with it in its motions 
the thinner and smaller eddies of aqueous va- 
pour. The latter fluid may be considered as 
permeating and moving in the interstices of the 
former, as a spring of water flows through a 
sand rock.* The lower current of air is, as has 



* Daniell. p. 129. 



100 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

been said, directed towards the equator, and 
hence it resists the motion of the steam, the 
tendency of which is in the opposite direction ; 
and prevents or much retards that continual 
flow of hot vapour into colder regions, by which 
a constant precipitation would take place in the 
latter situations. 

If, in this state of things, the flow of the cur- 
rent of air, which blows from any colder place 
into a warmer region, be retarded or stopped, 
the aqueous vapours will now be able to make 
their way to the colder point, where they will 
be precipitated in clouds or showers. 

Thus, in the lower part of the atmosphere, 
there are tendencies to a current of air in one 
direction, and a current of vapour in the opposite ; 
and these tendencies exist in the average weather 
of places situated at a moderate distance from 
the equator. The air tends from the colder to 
the warmer parts, the vapour from the warmer 
to the colder. 

The various distribution of land and sea, and 
many other causes, make these currents far from 
simple. But in general the air current pre- 
dominates, and keeps the skies clear and the 
moisture dissolved. Occasional and irregular 
occurrences disturb this predominance ; the 
moisture is then precipitated, the skies are 
clouded, and the clouds may descend in copious 
rains. 

These alternations of fair weather and showers 



LAWS OF HEAT. AIR. 



101 



appear to be much more favourable to vegetable 
and animal life than any uniform course of 
weather could have been. To produce this 
variety, we have two antagonist forces, by the 
struggle of which such changes occur. Steam 
and air, two transparent and elastic fluids, ex- 
pansible by heat, are in many respects and pro- 
perties very like each other. Yet the same heat, 
similarly applied to the globe, produces at the 
surface currents of these fluids, tending in oppo- 
site directions. And these currents mix and 
balance, conspire and interfere, so that our trees 
and fields have alternately water and sunshine ; 
our fruits and grain are successively developed 
and matured. Why should such laws of heat 
and elastic fluids so obtain, and be so combined ? 
Is it not in order that they may be fit for such 
offices? There is here an arrangement, which 
no chance could have produced. The details of 
this apparatus may be beyond our power of 
tracing ; its springs may be out of our sight. 
Such circumstances do not make it the less a 
curious and beautiful contrivance : they need 
not prevent our recognizing the skill and bene- 
volence which we can discover. 

2. But we have not yet done with the ma- 
chinery of the weather. In ascending from the 
earth's surface through the atmosphere, we find 
a remarkable difference in the heat and in the 
pressure of the air. It becomes much colder, 
and much lighter ; men's feelings tell them this ; 



102 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



and the thermometer and barometer confirm these 
indications. And here again we find something 
to remark. 

In both the simple atmospheres of which we 
have spoken, the one of air and the one of steam , 
the property which we have mentioned must 
exist. In each of them, both the temperature 
and the tension would diminish in ascending. 
But they would diminish at very different rates. 
The temperature, for instance, would decrease 
much more rapidly for the same height in dry 
air than in steam. If we begin with a tempera- 
ture of 80 degrees at the surface, on ascending 
5,000 feet the steam is still 76J degrees, the air 
is only 64 J degrees; at 10,000 feet, the steam 
is 73 degrees, the air 48h degrees ; at 15,000 
feet, steam is at 70 degrees, air has fallen below 
the freezing point to 31 \ degrees. Hence these 
two atmospheres cannot exist together without 
modifying one another : one must heat or cool 
the other, so that the coincident parts may be 
of the same temperature. This accordingly 
does take place, and this effect influences very 
greatly the constitution of the atmosphere. For 
the most part, the steam is compelled to accom- 
modate itself to the temperature of the air, the 
latter being of much the greater bulk. But if 
the upper parts of the aqueous vapour be cooled 
down to the temperature of the air, they will not 
by any means exert on the lower parts of the 
same vapour so great a pressure as the gaseous 



LAWS OF HEAT. AIR. 



10S 



form of these could bear. Hence, there will be 
a deficiency of moisture in the lower part of the 
atmosphere, and if water exist there, it will rise 
by evaporation, the surface feeling an insufficient 
tension ; and there will thus be a fresh supply 
of vapour upwards. As, however, the upper 
regions already contain as much as their tempe- 
rature will support in the state of gas, a preci- 
pitation will now take place, and the fluid thus 
formed will descend till it arrives in a lower 
region, where the tension and temperature are 
again adapted to its evaporation. 

Thus, we can have no equilibrium in such an 
atmosphere, but a perpetual circulation of vapour 
between its upper and lower parts. The currents 
of air which move about in different directions, 
at different altitudes, will be differently charged 
with moisture, and as they touch and mingle, 
lines of cloud are formed, which grow and join, 
and are spread out in floors, or rolled together 
in piles. These, again, by an additional accession 
of humidity, are formed into drops, and descend 
in showers into the lower regions, and if not 
evaporated in their fall, reach the surface of the 
earth. 

The varying occurrences thus produced, tend 
to multiply and extend their own variety . The 
ascending streams of vapour carry with them 
that latent heat belonging to their gaseous state, 
which, when they are condensed, they give out 
as sensible heat. They thus raise the tempera- 



IG4 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



ture of the upper regions of air, and occasion 
changes in the pressure and motion of its cur- 
rents. The clouds, again, by shading the surface 
of the earth from the sun, diminish the evapora- 
tion by which their own substance is supplied, 
and the heating effects by which currents are 
caused. Even the mere mechanical effects of 
the currents of fluid on the distribution of its 
own pressure, and the dynamical conditions of 
its motion, are in a high degree abstruse in their 
principles and complex in their results. It need 
not be wondered, therefore, if the study of this 
subject is very difficult and entangled, and our 
knowledge, after all, very imperfect. 

In the midst of all this apparent confusion, 
however, we can see much that we can under- 
stand. And, among other things, we may 
notice some of the consequences of the difference 
of the laws of temperature followed by steam 
and by air in going upwards. One important 
result is that the atmosphere is much drier, 
near the surface, than it would have been if the 
laws of density and temperature had been the 
same for both gases. If this had been so, the 
air would always have been saturated with 
vapour. It would have contained as much as 
the existing temperature could support, and the 
slightest cooling of any object would have 
covered it with a watery film like dew. As it 
is, the air contains much less than its full 
quantity of vapour: we may often cool m 



LAWS OF HEAT. AIR. 



105 



object 10, 20, or 30 degrees without obtaining; 
a deposition of water upon it, or reaching the 
dew-point , as it is called. To have had such a 
dripping state of the atmosphere as the former 
arrangement would have produced, would have 
been inconvenient, and, so far as we can judge, 
unsuited to vegetables as well as animals. No 
evaporation from the surface of either could 
have taken place under such conditions. 

The sizes and forms of clouds appear to de- 
pend on the same circumstance, of the air not 
being saturated with moisture. And it is seem- 
ingly much better that clouds should be com- 
paratively small and well defined, as they are, 
than that they should fill vast depths of the 
atmosphere with a thin mist, which would have 
been the consequence of the imaginary condition 
of things just mentioned. 

Here then we have another remarkable exhi- 
bition of two laws, in two nearly similar gaseous 
fluids, producing effects alike in kind, but dif- 
ferent in degree, and by the play of their differ- 
ence giving rise to a new set of results, peculiar 
in their nature and beneficial in their tendency. 
The form of the laws of air and of steam with 
regard to heat might, so far as we can see, have 
been more similar, or more dissimilar, than it 
now is : the rate of each law might have had a 
different amount from its present one, so as 
quite to alter the relation of the two. By the 
laws having such forms and such rates as they 



106 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

have, effects are produced, some of which we 
can distinctly perceive to be beneficial. Perhaps 
most persons will feel a strong persuasion, that 
if we understood the operation of these laws more 
distinctly, we should see still more clearly the 
beneficial tendency of these effects, and should 
probably discover others, at present concealed 
in the apparent perplexity of the subject. 

3. From what has been said, we may see, in 
a general way, both the causes and the effects 
of winds. They arise from any disturbance by 
temperature, motion, pressure, &c. of the equi- 
librium of the atmosphere, and are the efforts of 
nature to restore the balance. Their office in the 
economy of nature is to carry heat and moisture 
from one tract to another, and they are the 
great agents in the distribution of temperature 
and the changes of weather. Other purposes 
might easily be ascribed to them in the business 
of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and in 
the arts of human life, of which we shall not 
here treat. That character in which we now 
consider them, that of the machinery of atmos- 
pheric changes, and thus, immediately or re- 
motely, the instruments of atmospheric influ- 
ences, cannot well be refused them by any 
person. 

4. There is still one reflexion which ought not 
to be omitted. All the changes of the weather, 
even the most violent tempests and torrents of 
rain, may be considered as oscillations about the 



LAWS OF HEAT. AIR. 



107 



mean or average condition belonging to each 
place. All these oscillations are limited and 
transient ; the storm spends its fury, the inun- 
dation passes off, the sky clears, the calmer 
course of nature succeeds. In the forces which 
produce this derangement, there is a provision 
for making it short and moderate. The oscilla- 
tion stops of itself, like the rolling of a ship, 
when no longer impelled by the wind. Now, 
why should this be so ? Why should the oscil- 
lations, produced by the conflict of so many 
laws, seemingly quite unconnected with each 
other, be of this converging and subsiding cha- 
racter ? Would it be so under all arrange- 
ments ? Is it a matter of mechanical necessity 
that disturbance must end in the restoration of 
the medium condition ? By no means. There 
may be an utter subversion of the equilibrium. 
The ship may roll too far, and may capsize. 
The oscillations may go on, becoming larger and 
larger, till all trace of the original condition is 
lost ; till new forces of inequality and disturb- 
ance are brought into play ; and disorder and 
irregularity may succeed, without apparent limit 
or check in its own nature, like the spread of a 
conflagration in a city. This is a possibility in 
any combination of mechanical forces ; why 
does it not happen in the one now before us ? 
By what good fortune are the powers of heat, of 
water, of steam, of air, the effects of the earth's 
annual and diurnal motions, and probably other 



108 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

causes, so adjusted, that through all their strug- 
gles the elemental world goes on, upon the 
whole, so quietly and steadily? Why is the 
whole fabric of the weather never utterly de- 
ranged, its balance lost irrecoverably ? Why is 
there not an eternal conflict, such as the poets 
imagine to take place in their chaos ? 

" For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce, 
Strire here for mastery, and to battle bring 
Their embryon atoms : — 

to whom these most adhere 
He rules a moment: Chaos umpire sits, 
And by decision more embroils the fray." * 

A state of things something like that which 
Milton here seems to have imagined is, so far 
as we know, not mechanically impossible. It 
might have continued to obtain, if Hot and 
Cold, and Moist and Dry had not been com- 
pelled to " run into their places." It will be 
hereafter seen, that in the comparatively simple 
problem of the solar system, a number of very 
peculiar adjustments were requisite, in order 
that the system might retain a permanent form, 
in order that its motions might have their 
cycles, its perturbations their limits and period. 
The problem of the combination of such laws 
and materials as enter into the constitution of 
the atmosphere, is one manifestly of much 



* Par. Lost, b. II. 



LAWS OF HEAT. AIR. 



109 



greater complexity, and indeed to us probably 
of insurmountable difficulty as a mechanical 
problem. But all that investigation and analogy 
teach us, tends to show that it will resemble 
the other problem in the nature of its result; 
and that certain relations of its data, and of the 
laws of its elements, are necessary requisites, for 
securing the stability of its mean condition, and 
for giving a small and periodical character to 
its deviations from such a condition. 

It would then be probable, from this reflexion 
alone, that in determining the quantity and 
the law and intensity of the forces, of earth, 
water, air, and heat, the same regard has been 
shown to the permanency and stability of the 
terrestrial system, which may be traced in the 
adjustment of the masses, distances, positions, 
and motions of the bodies of the celestial ma- 
chine. 

This permanency appears to be, of itself, a 
suitable object of contrivance. The purpose for 
which the world was made could be answered 
only by its being preserved. But it has appeared, 
from the preceding part of this and the former 
chapter, that this permanence is a permanence 
of a state of things adapted by the most re- 
markable and multiplied combinations to the 
well-being of man, of animals, of vegetables. 
The adjustments and conditions therefore, be- 
yond the reach of our investigation as they are, 
by which its permanence is secured, must be 



110 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



conceived as fitted to add, in each of the 
instances above adduced, to the admiration 
which the several manifestations of Intelligent 
Beneficence are calculated to excite. 



Chapter XI. 

The Laws of Electricity. 

LECTRICITY undoubtedly exists in the 
atmosphere in most states of the air ; but 
we know very imperfectly the laws of this agent, 
and are still more ignorant of its atmospheric 
operation. The present state of science does not 
therefore enable us to perceive those adaptations 
of its laws to its uses, which we can discover in 
those cases where the laws and the uses are 
both of them more apparent. 

We can, however, easily make out that elec- 
trical agency plays a very considerable part 
among the clouds, in their usual conditions and 
changes. This may be easily shown by Frank- 
lin's experiment of the electrical kite. The 
clouds are sometimes positively, sometimes ne- 
gatively, charged, and the rain which descends 
from them offers also indications of one or other 
kind of electricity. The changes of wind and 
alterations of the form of the clouds are 
generally accompanied with changes in these 
electrical indications. Every one knows that 




ELECTRICITY. 



Ill 



a thunder-cloud is strongly charged with the 
electric fluid, (if it be a fluid), and that the 
stroke of the lightning is an electrical discharge. 
We may add that it appears, by recent experi- 
ments, that a transfer of electricity between 
plants and the atmosphere is perpetually going 
on during the process of vegetation. 

We cannot trace very exactly the precise 
circumstances, in the occurrences of the atmos- 
pheric regions, which depend on the influence 
of the laws of electricity : but we are tolerably 
certain, from what has been already noticed, 
that if these laws did not exist, or were very 
different from what they now are, the action of 
the clouds and winds, and the course of vegeta- 
tion, would also be other than it now is. 

It is therefore at any rate very probable that 
electricity has its appointed and important pur- 
poses in the economy of the atmosphere. And 
this being so, we may see a use in the thunder- 
storm and the stroke of the lightning. These 
violent events are, with regard to the electricity 
of the atmosphere, what winds are with regard 
to heat and moisture. They restore the equi- 
librium where it has been disturbed, and carry 
the fluid from places where it is superfluous, to 
others where it is deficient. 

We are so constituted, however, that these 
crises impress almost every one with a feeling 
of awe. The deep lowering gloom of the 
thunder-cloud, the overwhelming burst of the 



112 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

explosion, the flash from which the steadiest eye 
shrinks, and the irresistible arrow of the 
lightning which no earthly substance can with- 
stand, speak of something fearful, even inde- 
pendently of the personal danger which they may 
whisper. They convey, far more than any other 
appearance does, the idea of a superior and 
mighty power, manifesting displeasure and 
threatening punishment. Yet we find that this 
is not the language which they speak to the 
physical enquirer : he sees these formidable 
symptoms only as the means or the consequences 
of good. What office the thunderbolt and the 
whirlwind may have in the moral world, we 
cannot here discuss : but certainly he must 
speculate as far beyond the limits of philosophy 
as of piety, who pretends to have learnt that 
there their work has more of evil than of good. 
In the natural world, these apparently destruc- 
tive agents are, like all the other movements 
and appearances of the atmosphere, parts of a 
great scheme, of which every discoverable 
purpose is marked with beneficence as well as 
wisdom. 



113 



Chapter XII. 
The Laws of Magnetism, 

AGNETISM has no very obvious or ap- 
parently extensive office in the mecha- 
nism of the atmosphere and the earth : but the 
mention of it may be introduced, because its as- 
certained relations to the other powers which 
exist in the system are well suited to show us the 
connexion subsisting throughout the universe, 
and to check the suspicion, if any such should 
arise, that any law of nature is without its use. 
The parts of creation when these uses are most 
obscure, are precisely those parts when the laws 
themselves are least known. 

When indeed we consider the vast service of 
which magnetism is to man, by supplying him 
with that invaluable instrument the mariner's 
compass, many persons will require no further 
evidence of this property being introduced into 
the frame of things with a worthy purpose. As 
however, we have hitherto excluded use in the 
arts from our line of argument, we shall not here 
make any exception in favour of navigation, and 
what we shall observe belongs to another view 
of the subject. 

Magnetism has been discovered in modern 
times to have so close a connexion with galva- 

W. I 




114 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

nism, that they may be said to be almost diffe- 
rent aspects of the same agent. All the pheno- 
mena which we can produce with magnets, we 
can imitate with coils of galvanic wire. That 
galvanism exists in the earth, we need no proof. 
Electricity, which appears to differ from gal- 
vanic currents, much in the same manner in 
which a fluid at rest differs from a fluid in mo- 
tion, appears to be only galvanism in equili- 
brium, is there in abundance ; and recently, 
Mr. Fox * has shown by experiment that me- 
talliferous veins, as they lie in the earth, exer- 
cise a galvanic influence on each other. Some- 
thing of this kind might have been anticipated ; 
for masses of metal in contact, if they differ in 
temperature or other circumstances, are known 
to produce a galvanic current. Hence we have 
undoubtedly streams of galvanic influence mov- 
ing along in the earth. Whether or not such 
causes as these produce the directive power of 
the magnetic needle, we cannot here pretend to 
decide ; they can hardly fail to affect it. The 
Aurora Borealis too, probably an electrical phe- 
nomenon, is said, under particular circum- 
stances, to agitate the magnetic needle. It is 
not surprising, therefore, that, if electricity 
have an important office in the atmosphere, mag- 
netism should exist in the earth. It seems, 
likely, that the magnetic properties of the earth 
may be collateral results of the existence of the 
* Phil. Trans. 1831. 



MAGNETISM. 



115 



same cause by which electrical agency operates ; 
an agency which, as we have already seen, has 
important offices in the processes of vegetable 
life. And thus magnetism belongs to the same 
system of beneficial contrivance to which elec- 
tricity has been already traced. 

We see, however, on this subject very dimly 
and a very small way. It can hardly be doubted 
that magnetism has other functions than those 
we have noticed. 



Chapter XIII. 

The Properties of Light with regard to 
Vegetation. 

HE illuminating power of light will come 
under our consideration hereafter. Its 
agency, with regard to organic life, is too impor- 
tant not to be noticed, though this must be done 
briefly. Light appears to be as necessary to the 
health of plants as air or moisture. A plant may, 
indeed, grow without it, but it does not appear 
that a species could be so continued. Under such 
a privation, the parts which are usually green, 
assume a white colour, as is the case with vege- 
tables grown in a cellar, or protected by a cover- 
ing for the sake of producing this very effect ; 
thus, celery is in this manner blanched, or etio- 
lated. 



116 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



The part of the process of vegetable life for 
which light is especially essential, appears to be 
the functions of the leaves ; these are affected 
by this agent in a very remarkable manner. 
The moisture which plants imbibe is, by their 
vital energies, carried to their leaves ; and is 
there brought in contact with the atmosphere, 
which, besides other ingredients, contains, in 
genera], a portion of carbonic acid. So long as 
light is present, the leaf decomposes the car- 
bonic acid, appropriates the carbon to the for- 
mation of its own proper juices, and returns the 
disengaged oxygen into the atmosphere; thus 
restoring the atmospheric air to a condition in 
which it is more fitted than it was before for the 
support of animal life. The plant thus prepares 
the support of life for other creatures at the same 
time that it absorbs its own. The greenness of 
those members which affect that colour, and the 
disengagement of oxygen, are the indications 
that its vital powers are in healthful action : as 
soon as we remove light from the plant, these 
indications cease : it has no longer power to im- 
bibe carbon and disengage oxygen, but, on the 
contrary, it gives back some of the carbon al- 
ready obtain ed, and robs the atmosphere of oxy- 
gen for the purpose of reconverting this into 
carbonic acid. 

It cannot well be conceived that such effects 
of light on vegetables, as we have described, 
should occur, if that agent, of whatever nature 
it is, and those organs, had not been adapted to 



LIGHT AND PLANTS. 



317 



each other. But the subject is here introduced 
that the reader may the more readily receive the 
conviction of combining purpose which must 
arise, on finding that an agent, possessing these 
very peculiar chemical properties, is employed 
to produce also those effects of illumination, vi- 
sion, &c, which form the most obvious portion 
of the properties of light. 



Chapter XIV. 
Sound. 

ESIDES the function which air discharges 
as the great agent in the changes of me- 
teorology and vegetation, it has another office, 
also of great and extensive importance, as the 
vehicle of sound. 

1. The communication of sound through the 
air takes place by means of a process altogether 
different from anything of which we have yet 
spoken : namely, by the propagation of minute 
vibrations of the particles from one part of the 
fluid mass to another, without any local motion 
of the fluid itself. 

Perhaps we may most distinctly conceive the 
kind of effect here spoken of, by comparing it 
to the motion produced by the wind in a field 
of standing corn ; grassy waves travel visibly 
over the field, in the direction in which the 



1 IS TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



wind blows, but this appearance of an object 
moving is delusive. The only real motion is 
that of the ears of grain, of which each goes and 
returns, as the stalk stoops and recovers itself. 
This motion affects successively a line of ears in 
the direction of the wind, and affects simulta- 
neously all those ears of which the elevation or 
depression forms one visible wave. The eleva- 
tions and depressions are propagated in a con- 
stant direction, while the parts with which the 
space is filled only vibrate to and fro. Of ex- 
actly such a nature is the propagation of sound 
through the air. The particles of air go and 
return through very minute spaces, and this 
vibratory motion runs through the atmosphere 
from the sounding body to the ear. Waves, 
not of elevation and depression, but of conden- 
sation and rarefaction, are transmitted ; and the 
sound thus becomes an object of sense to the 
organ. 

Another familiar instance of the propagation 
of vibrations we have in the circles on the 
surface of smooth water, which diverge from 
the point where it is touched by a small object, 
as a drop of rain. In the beginning of a shower 
for instance, when the drops come distinct, 
though frequent, we may see each drop giving 
rise to a ring, formed of two or three close con- 
centric circles, which grow and spread, leaving 
the interior of the circles smooth, and gradually 
teaching parts of the surface more and more 



SOUND. 



119 



distant from their origin. In this instance, it is 
clearly not a portion of the water which flows 
onwards ; but the disturbance, the rise and fall 
of the surface which makes the ring-formed 
waves, passes into wider and wider circles, and 
thus the undulation is transmitted from its start- 
ing-place, to points in all directions on the sur- 
face of the fluid. 

The diffusion of these ring-formed undula- 
tions from their centre resembles the diffusion 
of a sound from the place where it is produced 
to the points where it is heard. The disturbance, 
or vibration, by which it is conveyed, travels 
at the same rate in all directions, and the waves 
which are propagated are hence of a circular 
form. They differ, however, from those on the 
surface of water ; for sound is communicated 
upwards and downwards, and in all interme- 
diate directions, as well as horizontally ; hence 
the waves of sound are spherical, the point where 
the sound is produced being the centre of the 
sphere. 

This diffusion of vibrations in spherical shells 
of successive condensation and rarefaction, will 
easily be seen to be different from any local mo- 
tion of the air, as wind, and to be independent of 
that. The circles on the surface of water will 
spread on a river which is flowing, provided it 
be smooth, as well as on a standing canal. 

Not only are such undulations propagated 
almost undisturbed by any local motion of the 



120 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



fluid in which they take place, but also, many 
may be propagated in the same fluid at the same 
time, without disturbing each other. We may 
see this effect on water. When several drops 
fall near each other, the circles which they pro- 
duce cross each other, without either of them 
being lost, and the separate courses of the rings 
may still be traced. 

All these consequences, both in water, in air, 
and in any other fluid, can be very exactly in- 
vestigated upon mechanical principles, and the 
greater part of the phenomena can thus be shown 
to result from the properties of the fluids. 

There are several remarkable circumstances 
in the way in which air answers its purpose as 
the vehicle of sound, of which we will now point 
out a few. 

2. The loudness of sound is such as is con- 
venient for common purposes. The organs of 
speech can, in the present constitution of the air, 
produce, without fatigue, such a tone of voice as 
can be heard with distinctness and with comfort. 
That any great alteration in this element might 
be incommodious, we may judge from the diffi- 
culties to which persons are subject who are dull 
of hearing, and from the disagreeable effects of 
a voice much louder than usual, or so low as to 
be indistinct. Sounds produced by the human 
organs, with other kinds of air, are very different 
from those in our common air. If a man inhale 
a quantity of hydrogen gas, and then speak, his 
voice is scarcely audible. 



SOUND. 



121 



The loudness of sounds becomes smaller in 
proportion as they come from a greater distance. 
This enables us to judge of the distance of ob- 
jects, in some degree at least, by the sounds 
which proceed from them. Moreover it is found 
that we can judge of the position of objects by 
the ear : and this judgment seems to be formed 
by comparing the loudness of the impression of 
the same sound on the two ears and two sides of 
the head.* 

The loudness of sounds appears to depend on 
the extent of vibration of the particles of air f 
and this is determined by the vibrations of the 
sounding body. 

3. The pitch or the differences of acute and 
grave, in sounds, form another important pro- 
perty, and one which fits them for a great part 
of their purposes. By the association of diffe- 
rent notes, we have all the results of melody 
and harmony in musical sound ; and of intona- 
tion and modulation of the voice, of accent, ca- 
dence, emphasis, expression, passion, in speech. 
The song of birds, which is one of their princi- 
pal modes of communication, depends chiefly for 
its distinctions and its significance upon the com- 
binations of acute and grave. 

These differences are produced by the diffe- 
rent rapidity of vibration of the particles of air. 
The gravest sound has about thirty vibrations in 
a second, the most acute about one thousand. 

* Mr. Gough in Manch. Mem. vol. 



122 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



Between these limits each sound has a musical 
character, and from the different relations of the 
number of vibrations in a second arise all the 
differences of musical intervals, concords and 
discords. 

4. The quality of sounds is another of their 
differences. This is the name given to the dif- 
ference of notes of the same pitch, that is the same 
note as to acute and grave, when produced by 
different instruments. If a flute and a violin 
be in unison, the notes are still quite different 
sounds. It is this kind of difference which dis- 
tinguishes the voice of one man from that of 
another : and it is manifestly therefore one of 
great consequence : since it connects the voice 
with the particular person, and is almost neces- 
sary in order that language may be a medium of 
intercourse between men. 

5. The articulate character of sounds is for 
us one of the most important arrangements 
which exist in the world ; for it is by this that 
sounds become the interpreters of thought, will, 
and feeling, the means by which a person can 
convey his wants, his instructions, his promises, 
his kindness, to others ; by which one man can 
regulate the actions and influence the convic- 
tions and judgments of another. It is in virtue 
of the possibility of shaping air into words, that 
the imperceptible vibrations which a man pro- 
duces in the atmosphere, become some of his 
most important actions, the foundations of the 



SOUND. 



123 



highest moral and social relations, and the con- 
dition and instrument of all the advancement 
and improvement of which he is susceptible. 

It appears that the differences of articulate 
sound arise from the different form of the cavity 
through which the sound is made to proceed 
immediately after being produced. In the hu- 
man voice the sound is produced in the larynx, 
and modified by the cavity of the mouth, and 
the various organs which surround this cavity. 
The laws by which articulate sounds are thus 
produced have not yet been fully developed, but 
appear to be in the progress of being so. 

The properties of sounds which have been 
mentioned, differences of loudness, of pitch, of 
quality, and articulation, appear to be all requi- 
site in order that sound shall answer its purposes 
in the economy of animal and of human life. 
And how was the air made capable of conveying 
these four differences, at the same time that the 
organs were made capable of producing them ? 
Surely by a most refined and skilful adaptation, 
applied with a most comprehensive design. 

6. Again ; is it by chance that the air and 
the ear exist together? Did the air produce 
the organization of the ear ? or the ear, inde- 
pendently organized, anticipate the constitution 
of the atmosphere ? Or is not the only intelli- 
gible account of the matter, this, that one was 
made for the other : that there is a mutual adap- 
tation produced by an Intelligence which was 



124 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

acquainted with the properties of both ; which 
adjusted them to each other as we find them 
adjusted, in order that birds might communi- 
cate by song, that men might speak and hear, 
and that language might play its extraordinary 
part in its operation upon men's thoughts, ac- 
tions, institutions, and fortunes ? 

The vibrations of an elastic fluid like the air, 
and their properties, follow from the laws of 
motion ; and whether or not these laws of the 
motion of fluids might in reality have been 
other than they are, they appear to us insepara- 
bly connected with the existence of matter, and 
as much a thing of necessity as we can conceive 
any thing in the universe to be. The propaga- 
tion of such vibrations, therefore, and their pro- 
perties, we may at present allow to be a neces- 
sary part of the constitution of the atmosphere. 
But what is it that makes these vibrations be- 
come sound ? How is it that they produce such 
an effect on our senses, and, through those, on 
our minds ? The vibrations of the air seem to be 
of themselves no more fitted to produce sound 
than to produce smell. We know that such vi- 
brations do not universally produce sound, but 
only between certain limits. When the vibra- 
tions are fewer than thirty in a second, they are 
perceived as separate throbs, and not as a con- 
tinued sound; and there is a certain limit of 
rapidity, beyond which the vibrations become 
inaudible. This limit is different to different 



SOUND. 



125 



ears, and we are thus assured by one person's 
ear that there are vibrations, though to that of 
another they do not produce sound. How was 
the human ear adapted so that its perception of 
vibrations as sounds should fall within these 
limits ? — the very limits within which the vibra- 
tions fall, which it most concerns us to perceive ; 
those of the human voice for instance ? How 
nicely are the organs adjusted with regard to the 
most minute mechanical motions of the elements I 



Chapter XV. 
The Atmosphere. 

E have considered in succession a number 
of the properties and operations of the at- 
mosphere, and have found them separately very 
curious. But an additional interest belongs to 
the subject when we consider them as combined. 
The atmosphere under this point of view must 
appear a contrivance of the most extraordinary 
kind. To answer any of its purposes, to carry 
on any of its processes, separately, requires pe- 
culiar arrangements and adjustments ; to an- 
swer all at once, purposes so varied, to combine 
without confusion so many different trains, im- 
plies powers and attributes which can hardly, 
fail to excite in a high degree our admiration, 
and reverence. 




126 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

If the atmosphere be considered as a vast ma- 
chine, it is difficult to form any just conception 
of the profound skill and comprehensiveness of 
design which it displays. It diffuses and tem- 
pers the heat of different climates ; for this pur- 
pose it performs a circulation occupying the 
whole range from the pole to the equator ; and 
while it is doing this, it executes many smaller 
circuits between the sea and the land. At the 
same time, it is the means of forming clouds and 
rain, and for this purpose, a perpetual circula- 
tion of the watery part of the atmosphere goes 
on between its lower and upper regions. Besides 
this complication of circuits, it exercises a more 
irregular agency, in the occasional winds which 
blow from all quarters, tending perpetually to 
restore the equilibrium of heat and moisture. 
But this incessant and multiplied activity dis- 
charges only a part of the functions of the air. 
It is, moreover, the most important and univer- 
sal material of the growth and sustenance of 
plants and animals ; and is for this purpose 
every where present and almost uniform in its 
quantity. With all its local motion, it has also 
the office of a medium of communication between 
intelligent creatures, which office it performs by 
another set of motions, entirely different both 
from the circulation and the occasional move- 
ments already mentioned ; these different kinds 
of motions not interfering materially with each 
other : and this last purpose, so remote from the 
others in its nature, it answers in a manner so 



THE ATMOSPHERE. 



127 



perfect and so easy, that we cannot imagine that 
the object could have been more completely at- 
tained, if this had been the sole purpose for which 
the atmosphere had been created. With all these 
qualities, this extraordinary part of our terres- 
trial system is scarcely ever in the way : and 
when we have occasion to do so, we put forth 
our hand and push it aside, without being aware 
of its being* near us. 

We may add, that it is, in addition to all that 
we have hitherto noticed, a constant source of 
utility and beauty in its effects on light. 
Without air we should see nothing, except ob- 
jects on which the sun's rays fell, directly or by 
reflection. It is the atmosphere which converts 
sunbeams into daylight, and fills the space in 
which we are with illumination. 

The contemplation of the atmosphere, as a 
machine which answers all these purposes, is 
well suited to impress upon us the strongest con- 
viction of the most refined, far-seeing, and far- 
ruling contrivance. It seems impossible to sup- 
pose that these various properties were so be- 
stowed and so combined, any otherwise than by 
a beneficent and intelligent Being, able and 
willing to diffuse organization, life, health, and 
enjoyment through all parts of the visible world ; 
possessing a fertility of means which no multi- 
plicity of objects could exhaust, and a discrimi- 
nation of consequences which no complication 
of conditions could embarrass. 



]28 



Chapter XVI. 
Light. 

ESIDES the hearing and sound there is 
another mode by which we become sensible 
of the impressions of external objects, namely, 
sight and light. This subject also offers some 
observations bearing on our present purpose. 

It has been declared by writers on Natural 
Theology, that the human eye exhibits such 
evidence of design and skill in its construction, 
that no one, who considers it attentively, can re- 
sist this impression : nor does this appear to be 
saying too much. It must, at the same time, be 
obvious that this construction of the eye could 
not answer its purposes, except the constitution 
of light corresponded to it* Light is an element 
of the most peculiar kind and properties, and 
such an element can hardly be conceived to have 
been placed in the universe without a regard to 
its operation and functions. As the eye is made 
for light, so light must have been made, at least 
among other ends, for the eye. 

1 . We must expect to comprehend imperfectly 
only the mechanism of the elements. Still, we 
have endeavoured to show that in some instances 
the arrangements by which their purposes are 




LIGHT. 



129 



affected, are, to a certain extent, intelligible. In 
order to explain, however, in what manner light 
answers those ends which appear to us its prin- 
cipal ones, we must know something of the na- 
ture of light. There have, hitherto, been, among 
men of science, two prevailing opinions upon this 
subject : some considering light as consisting in 
the emission of luminous particles ; others ac- 
counting for its phenomena by the propagation 
of vibrations through a highly subtle and elastic 
ether. The former opinion has, till lately, been 
most generally entertained in this country, hav- 
ing been the hypothesis on which Newton made 
his calculations ; the latter is the one to which 
most of those persons have been led, who, in re- 
cent times, have endeavoured to deduce general 
conclusions from the newly discovered pheno- 
mena of light. Among these persons, the theory 
of undulations is conceived to be established in 
nearly the same manner, and almost as certainly, 
as the doctrine of universal gravitation ; namely, 
by a series of laws inferred from numerous facts, 
which, proceeding from different sets of pheno- 
mena, are found to converge to one common 
view ; and by calculations founded upon the 
theory, which, indicating new and untried facts, 
are found to agree exactly with experiment. 

We cannot here introduce a sketch of the pro- 
gress by which the phenomena have thus led to 
the acceptance of the theory of undulations. But 
this theory appears to have such claims to our 

w. K 



130 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



assent, that the views which we have to offer 
with regard to the design exercised in the adapt- 
ation of light to its purposes, will depend on the 
undulatory theory, so far as they depend on 
theory at all.* 

2. The impressions of sight, like those of hear- 
ing, differ in intensity and in kind. Brightness 
and Colour are the principal differences among 
visible things, as loudness and pitch are among 
sounds. But there is a singular distinction be- 
tween these senses in one respect : every object 
and part of an object seen, is necessarily and 
inevitably referred to some position in the space 
before us ; and hence visible things have place, 
magnitude, form, as well as light, shade, and 
colour. There is nothing analogous to this in 
the sense of hearing ; for though we can, in some 
approximate degree, guess the situation of the 
point from which a sound proceeds, this is a 
secondary process, distinguishable from the per- 
ception of the sound itself ; whereas we cannot 
conceive visible things without form and place. 

The law according to which the sense of vision 
is thus affected, appears to be this. By the pro- 
perties of light, the external scene produces, 
through the transparent parts of the eye, an 

* The reader who is acquainted with the two theories of 
light, will perceive that though we have adopted the doc- 
trine of the ether, the greater part of the arguments adduced 
would be equally forcible, if expressed in the language of 
the theory of emission. 



LIGHT. 



131 



image or picture exactly resembling the reality, 
upon the back part of the retina : and each point 
which we see is seen in the direction of a line 
passing from its image on the retina, through 
the centre of the pupil of the eye.* In this man- 
ner we perceive by the eye the situation of every 
point, at the same time that we perceive its exist- 
ence ; and by combining the situations of many 
points, we have forms and outlines of every sort. 

That we should receive from the eye this no- 
tice of the position of the object as well as of its 
other visible qualities, appears to be absolutely 
necessary for our intercourse with the external 
world ; and the faculty of doing so is so intimate 
a part of our constitution that we cannot con- 
ceive ourselves divested of it. Yet in order to 
imagine ourselves destitute of this faculty, we 
have only to suppose that the eye should receive 
its impressions as the ear does, and should ap- 
prehend red and green, bright and dark, with- 
out placing them side by side ; as the ear takes 
in the different sounds which compose a concert, 
without attributing them to different parts of 
space. 

The peculiar property thus belonging to vision, 
of perceiving position, is so essential to us, that 
we may readily believe that some particular pro- 
vision has been made for its existence. The re- 
markable mechanism of the eye (precisely re- 

* Or rather through the focal centre of the eye, which 'is 
always near the centre of the pupil. 



132 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



sembling that of a camera obscura,) by which it 
produces an image on the nervous web forming 
its hinder part, seems to have this effect for its 
main object. And this mechanism necessarily 
supposes certain corresponding properties in 
light itself, by means of which such an effect 
becomes possible. 

The main properties of light which are con- 
cerned in this arrangement, are reflexion and 
refraction : reflexion, by which light is reflected 
and scattered by all objects, and thus comes to 
the eye from all : and refraction, by which its 
course is bent, when [it passes obliquely out of 
one transparent medium into another ; and by 
which, consequently, convex transparent sub- 
stances, such as the cornea and humours of the 
eye, possess the power of making the light con- 
verge to a focus or point ; an assemblage of such 
points forming the images on the retina, which 
we have mentioned. 

Reflexion and refraction are therefore the es- 
sential and indispensable properties of light ; and 
so far as we can understand, it appears that it 
was necessary that light should possess such 
properties, in order that it might form a medium 
of communication between man and the external 
world. We may consider its power of passing 
through transparent media (as air) to be given 
in order that it may enlighten the earth; its 
affection of reflexion, for the purpose of making 
colours visible; and its refraction to be bestowed, 



LIGHT. 



133 



that it may enable us to discriminate figure and 
position, by means of the lenses of the eye. 

In this manner light may be considered as 
constituted with a peculiar reference to the eyes 
of animals, and its leading properties may be 
looked upon as contrivances or adaptations to fit 
it for its visual office. And in such a point of 
view the perfection of the contrivance or adapt- 
ation must be allowed to be very remarkable. 

3. But besides the properties of reflexion and 
refraction, the most obvious laws of light, an 
extraordinary variety of phenomena have lately 
been discovered, regulated by other laws of the 
most curious kind, uniting great complexity with 
great symmetry. We refer to the phenomena 
of diffraction, polarization, and periodical co- 
lours, produced by crystals and by thin plates. 
We have, in these facts, a vast mass of proper- 
ties and laws, offering a subject of study which 
has been pursued with eminent skill and intel- 
ligence. But these properties and laws, so far 
as has yet been discovered, exert no agency 
whatever, and have no purpose, in the general 
economy of nature. Beams of light polarised 
in contrary directions exhibit the most remark- 
able differences when they pass through certain 
crystals, but manifest no discoverable difference 
in their immediate impression on the eye. We 
have, therefore, here a number of laws of light, 
which we cannot perceive to be established with 
any design which has a reference to the other 
parts of the universe. 



134 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

Undoubtedly it is exceedingly possible that 
these differences of light may operate in some 
quarter, and in some way, which we cannot de- 
tect ; and that these laws may have purposes and 
may answer ends of which we have no suspicion. 
All the analogy of nature teaches us a lesson of 
humility, with regard to the reliance we are to 
place on our discernment and judgment as to 
such matters. But with our present knowledge, 
we may observe, that this curious system of phe- 
nomena appears to be a collateral result of the 
mechanism by which the effects of light are pro- 
duced ; and therefore a necessary consequence 
of the existence of that element of which the 
offices are so numerous and so beneficent. 

The new properties of light, and the specula- 
tions founded upon them, have led many persons 
to the belief of the undulatory theory ; which, as 
we have said, is considered by some philosophers 
as demonstrated. If we adopt this theory, we 
consider the luminiferous ether to have no local 
motion : and to produce refraction and reflexion 
by the operation of its elasticity alone. We must 
necessarily suppose the tenuity of the ether to be 
extreme ; and if we moreover suppose its tension 
to be very great, which the vast velocity of light 
requires us to suppose, the vibrations by which 
light is propagated will be transverse vibrations, 
that is, the motion to and fro will be athwart the 
line along which the undulation travels. The 
reader may perhaps aid his conception of this 



LIGHT. 



135 



motion, by attending to the undulation of a long 
pendant streaming in the wind from the mast- 
head of a ship : he will see that while the undu- 
lation runs visibly along the strip of cloth, from 
the mast-head to the loose end, every part of the 
strip in succession moves to and fro across this 
line. 

From this transverse character in the lumi- 
niferous vibrations, all the laws of polarization 
necessarily follow : and the properties of trans- 
verse vibrations, combined with the properties 
of vibrations in general, give rise to all the cu- 
rious and numerous phenomena of colours of 
which we have spoken. If the vibrations be 
transverse, they may be resolved into two dif- 
ferent planes ; this is polarization : if they fall 
on a medium which has different elasticity in 
different directions, they will be divided into two 
sets of vibrations ; this is double refraction : and 
so on. Some of the new properties, however, as 
the fringes of shadows and the colours of thin 
plates, follow from the undulatory theory, whe- 
ther the vibrations be transverse or not. 

It would appear, therefore, that the propaga- 
tion of light by means of a subtle medium, leads 
necessarily to the extraordinary collection of pro- 
perties which have recently been discovered ; 
and, at any rate, its propagation by the trans- 
verse vibrations of such a medium does lead in- 
evitably to these results. 

Leaving it therefore to future times to point 



136 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



out the other reasons (or uses if they exist) of 
these newly discovered properties of light, in 
their bearing on other parts of the world, we 
may venture to say, that if light was to be pro- 
pagated through transparent media by the undu- 
lations of a subtle fluid, these properties must 
result, as necessarily as the rainbow results from 
the unequal refrangibility of different colours. 
This phenomenon and those, appear alike to be 
the collateral consequences of the laws impressed 
on light with a view to its principal offices. 

Thus the exquisitely beautiful and symmetri- 
cal phenomena and laws of polarization, and of 
crystalline and other effects, may be looked 
upon as indications of the delicacy and subtlety 
of the mechanism by which man, through his 
visual organs, is put in communication with the 
external world ; is made acquainted with the 
forms and qualities of objects in the most remote 
regions of space ; and is enabled, in some mea- 
sure, to determine his position and relation in 
a universe in which he is but an atom. 

4. If we suppose it clearly established that 
light is produced by the vibrations of an ether, 
we find considerations offer themselves, similar 
to those which occurred in the case of sound. 
The vibrations of this ether affect our organs 
with the sense of light and colour. Why, or 
how do they do this ? It is only within certain 
limits that the effect is produced, and these limits 
are comparatively narrower here than in the 



I 



LIGHT. 137 

case of sound. The whole scale of colour, from 
violet to crimson, lies between vibrations which 
are 458 million millions, and 727 million mil- 
lions in a second ; a proportion much smaller 
than the corresponding ratio for perceptible 
sounds. Why should such vibrations produce 
perception in the eye, and no others? There 
must be here some peculiar adaptation of the 
sensitive powers to these wonderfully minute 
and condensed mechanical motions. What hap- 
pens when the vibrations are slower than the 
red, or quicker than the blue ? They do not pro- 
duce vision : do they produce any effect ? Have 
they any thing to do with heat or with electri- 
city ? We cannot tell. The ether must be as 
susceptible of these vibrations, as of those which 
produce vision. But the mechanism of the eye 
is adjusted to this latter kind only ; and this 
precise kind, (whether alone or mixed with 
others,) proceeds from the sun and from other 
luminaries, and thus communicates to us the 
state of the visible universe. The mere material 
elements then are full of properties which we 
can understand no otherwise, than as the results 
of a refined contrivance. 



138 



Chapter XVII. 
The Ether. 

N what has just been said, we have spoken 
of light, only with respect to its power of 
illuminating objects, and conveying the impres- 
sion of them to the eye. It possesses, however, 
beyond all doubt, many other qualities. Light 
is intimately connected with heat, as we see in 
the case of the sun and of flame ; yet it is clear 
that light and heat are not identical. Light is 
evidently connected too with electricity and gal- 
vanism ; and perhaps through these, with mag- 
netism : it is, as has already been mentioned, 
indispensably necessary to the healthy discharge 
of the functions of vegetable life ; without it 
plants cannot duly exercise their vital powers : 
it manifests also chemical action in various ways. 

The luminiferous ether then, if we so call the 
medium in which light is propagated, must 
possess many other properties besides those me- 
chanical ones on which the illuminating power 
depends. It must not be merely like a fluid 
poured into the vacant spaces and interstices of 
the material world, and exercising no action 
on objects ; it must affect the physical, chemical 
and vital powers of what it touches. It must 
be a great and active agent in the work of the 




THE ETHER. 



139 



universe, as well as an active reporter of what 
is done by other agents. It must possess a 
number of complex and refined contrivances and 
adjustments which we cannot analyze, bearing 
upon plants and chemical compounds, and the 
imponderable agents ; as well as those laws which 
we conceive that we have analyzed, by which it 
is the vehicle of illumination and vision. 

We have had occasion to point out how com- 
plex is the machinery of the atmosphere, and 
how varied its objects ; since, besides being the 
means of communication as the medium of sound, 
it has known laws, which connect it with heat 
and moisture ; and other laws, in virtue of which 
it is decomposed by vegetables. It appears, in 
like manner, that the ether is not only the vehicle 
of light, but has also laws, at present unknown, 
which connect it with heat, electricity, and other 
agencies ; and other laws through which it is 
necessary to vegetables, enabling them to decom- 
pose air. All analogy leads us to suppose that 
if we knew as much of the constitution of the 
luminiferous ether as we know of the constitu- 
tion of the atmosphere, we should find it a ma- 
chine as complex and artifical, as skilfully and 
admirably constructed. 

We know at present very little indeed of the 
construction of this machine. Its existence is, 
perhaps, satisfactorily made out ; in order that 
we may not interrupt the progress of our argu- 
ment, we shall refer to other works for the rea- 



140 



TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS* 



sonings which appear to lead to this conclusion. 
But whether heat, electricity, galvanism, mag- 
netism, be fluids ; or effects or modifications of 
fluids ; and whether such fluids or ethers be the 
same with the luminiferous ether, or with each 
other ; are questions of which all or most appear 
to be at present undecided, and it would be pre- 
sumptuous and premature here to take one side 
or the other. 

The mere fact, however, that there is such an 
ether, and that it has properties related to 
other agents, in the way we have suggested, is 
well calculated to extend our views of the struc- 
ture of the universe, and of the resources, if we 
may so speak, of the power by which it is ar- 
ranged. The solid and fluid matter of the earth 
is the most obvious to our senses ; over this, and 
in its cavities, is poured an invisible fluid, the 
air, by which warmth and life are diffused and 
fostered, and by which men communicate with 
men : over and through this again, and reaching, 
so far as we know, to the utmost bounds of the 
universe, is spread another most subtle and at- 
tenuated fluid, which, by the play of another set 
of agents, aids the energies of nature, and which, 
filling all parts of space, is a means of commu- 
nication with other planets and other systems. 

There is nothing in all this like any material 
necessity, compelling the world to be as it is 
and no otherwise. How should the properties 
of these three great classes of agents, visible ob- 



THE ETHER. 



141 



jects, air, and light, so harmonise and assist 
each other, that order and life should be the re- 
sult? Without all the three, and all the three 
constituted in their present manner, and subject 
to their present laws, living things could not 
exist. If the earth had no atmosphere, or if the 
world had no ether, all must be inert and dead. 
Who constructed these three extraordinarily 
complex pieces of machinery, the earth with its 
productions, the atmosphere, and the ether ? 
Who fitted them into each other in many parts, 
and thus made it possible for them to work to- 
gether? We conceive there can be but one 
answer; a most wise and good God. 



Chapter XVIII. 

Recapitulation. 

IT has been shown in the preceding chap- 
ters that a great number of quantities 
and laws appear to have been selected in the con- 
struction of the universe ; and that by the ad- 
justment to each other of the magnitudes and 
laws thus selected, the constitution of the world 
is what we find it, and is fitted for the support 
of vegetables and animals, in a manner in which 
it could not have been, if the properties and 
quantities of the elements had been different 



142 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

from what they are. We shall here recapitu- 
late the principal of the laws and magnitudes to 
which this conclusion has been shown to apply. 

1. The Length of the Year, which de- 
pends on the force of the attraction of the 
sun, and its distance from the earth. 

2. The Length of the Day. 

3. The Mass of the Earth, which de- 
pends on its magnitude and density. 

4. The Magnitude of the Ocean. 

5. The Magnitude of the Atmosphere. 

6. The Law and Rate of the Conducting 
Power of the Earth. 

7. The Law and Rate of the Radiating 
Power of the Earth. 

8. The Law and Rate of the Expansion 
of Water by Heat. 

9. The Law and Rate of the Expansion " 
of Water by Cold, below 40 degrees. 

10. The Law and Quantity of the Expan- 
sion of Water in Freezing. 

11. The Quantity of Latent Heat ab- 
sorbed in Thawing. 

12. The Quantity of Latent Heat ab- 
sorbed in Evaporation. 

13. The Law and Rate of Evaporation 
with regard to Heat. 

H. The Law and Rate of the Expansion 
of Air by Heat. 

15. The Quantity of Heat absorbed in 
the Expansion of Air. 



RECAPITULATION. 



143 



16. The Law and Rate of the Passage of 
Aqueous Vapour through Air. 

17. The Laws of Electricity ; its relations 
to Air and Moisture. 

18. The Fluidity, Density, and Elas- 
ticity of the Air, by means of which its 
vibrations produce Sound. 

19. The Fluidity, Density, and Elas- 
ticity of the Ether, by means of which its 
vibrations produce light. 

2. These are the data, the elements, as astro- 
nomers call the quantities which determine a 
planet's orbit, on which the mere inorganic part 
of the universe is constructed. To these, the con- 
stitution of the organic world is adapted in in- 
numerable points, by laws of which we can trace 
the results, though we cannot analyze their ma- 
chinery. Thus, the vital functions of vegetables 
have periods which correspond to the length of 
the year, and of the day ; their vital powers have 
forces which correspond to the force of gravity ; 
the sentient faculties of man are such that the 
vibrations of air, (within certain limits,) are per- 
ceived as sound, those of ether, as light. And 
while we are enumerating these corresponden- 
cies, we perceive that there are thousands of 
others, and that we can only select a very small 
number of those where the relation happens to 
be most clearly made out or most easily explained. 

Now, in the list of the mathematical elements 
of the universe which has just been given, why 



144 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



have we such laws and such quantities as there 
occur, and no other? For the most part, the 
data there enumerated are independent of each 
other, and might be altered separately, so far as 
the mechanical conditions of the case are con- 
cerned. Some of these data probably depend 
on each other : thus the latent heat of aqueous 
vapour is perhaps connected with the difference 
of the rate of expansion of water and of steam : 
but all natural philosophers will, probably, agree, 
that there must be, in this list, a great number 
of things entirely without any mutual dependence, 
as the year and the day, the expansion of air and 
the expansion of steam. There are, therefore, it 
appears, a number of things which, in the struc- 
ture of the world, might have been otherwise, 
and which are what they are in consequence of 
choice or of chance. We have already seen, in 
many of the cases separately, how unlike chance 
every thinglooks : — that substances, which might 
have existed any how, so far as they themselves 
are concerned, exist exactly in such a manner 
and measure as they should, to secure the wel- 
fare of other things : — that the laws are tempered 
and fitted together in the only way in which the 
world could have gone on, according to all that 
we can conceive of it. This must, therefore, be 
the work of choice ; and if so, it cannot be 
doubted, of a most wise and benevolent Chooser. 

3. The appearance of choice is still further 
illustrated by the variety as well as the number 



RECAPITULATION. 



145 



of the laws selected. The laws are unlike one 
another. Steam certainly expands at a very dif- 
ferent rate from air by the application of heat, 
probably according to a different law : water 
expands in freezing, but mercury contracts : 
heat travels in a manner quite different through 
solids and fluids. Every separate substance has 
its own density, gravity, cohesion, elasticity, its 
relations to heat, to electricity, to magnetism ; 
besides all its chemical affinities, which form an 
endless throng of laws, connecting every one 
substance in creation with every other, and dif- 
ferent for each pair anyhow taken. Nothing 
can look less like a world formed of atoms oper- 
ating upon each other according to some univer- 
sal and inevitable laws, than this does : if such 
a system of things be conceivable, it cannot be 
our system. We have, it may be, fifty simple 
substances in the world ; each of which is in- 
vested with properties, both of chemical and 
mechanical action, altogether different from 
those of any other substance. Every portion, 
however minute, of any of these, possesses all 
the properties of the substance. Of each of 
these substances there is a certain unalterable 
quantity in the universe ; when combined, their 
compounds exhibit new chemical affinities, new 
mechanical laws. Who gave these different 
laws to the different substances? who propor- 
tioned the quantity of each ? But suppose this 
done. Suppose these substances in existence ; 

W. L 



146 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 

in contact ; in due proportion to each other. Is 
this a world, or at least our world? No more 
than the mine and the forest are the ship of 
war or the factory. These elements, with their 
constitution perfect, and their proportion suit- 
able, are still a mere chaos. They must be put 
in their places. They must not be where their 
own properties would place them. They must 
be made to assume a particular arrangement, or 
we can have no regular and permanent course 
of nature. This arrangement must again have 
additional peculiarities, or we can have no or- 
ganic portion of the world. The millions of 
millions of particles which the world contains, 
must be finished up in as complete a manner, 
and fitted into their places with as much nicety, 
as the most delicate wheel or spring in a piece 
of human machinery. What are the habits of 
thought to which it can appear possible that 
this could take place without design, intention, 
intelligence, purpose, knowledge? 

In what has just been said, we have spoken 
only of the constitution of the inorganic part of 
the universe. The mechanism, if we may so call 
it, of vegetable and animal life, is so far beyond 
our comprehension, that though some of the 
same observations might be applied to it, we do 
not dwell upon the subject. We know that 
in these processes also, the mechanical and 
chemical properties of matter are necessary, 
but we know too that these alone will not ac- 



RECAPITULATION. 



HI 



count for the phenomena of life. There is some- 
thing more than these. The lowest stage of 
vitality and irritability appears to carry us be- 
yond mechanism, beyond chemical affinity. All 
that has been said with regard to the exactness 
of the adjustments, the combination of various 
means, the tendency to continuance, to preserv- 
ation, is applicable with additional force to 
the organic creation, so far as we can perceive 
the means employed. These, however, belong 
to a different province of the subject, and must 
be left to other hands. 



148 



BOOK II. 

COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

HEN we turn our attention to the larger 
portions of the universe, the sun, the 
planets, and the earth as one of them, the moon 
and other satellites, the fixed stars, and other 
heavenly bodies;— the views which we obtain 
concerning their mutual relations, arrangements 
and movements, are called, as we have already- 
stated, cosmical views. These views will, we 
conceive, afford us indications of the wisdom 
and care of the Power by which the objects 
which we thus consider, were created and are 
preserved : and we shall now proceed to 
point out some circumstances in which these 
attributes may be traced. 

It has been observed by writers on Natural 
Theology, that the arguments for the being and 
perfections of the Creator, drawn from cosmical 
considerations, labour under some disadvantages 
when compared with the arguments founded on 
those provisions and adaptations which more 
immediately affect the well being of organized 




COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 149 

creatures. The structure of the solar system 
has far less analogy with such machinery as we 
can construct and comprehend, than we find in 
the structure of the bodies of animals, or even in 
the causes of the weather. Moreover, we do 
not see the immediate bearing of cosmical ar-^ 
rangements on that end which we most readily 
acknowledge to be useful and desirable, the sup- 
port and comfort of sentient natures: so that, 
from both causes, the impression of benevolent 
design in this case is less striking and pointed 
than that which results from the examination of 
some other parts of nature. 

But in considering the universe, according to 
the view we have taken, as a collection of laws, 
astronomy, the science which teaches us the laws 
of the motions of the heavenly bodies, possesses 
some advantages, among the subjects from which 
we may seek to learn the character of the 
government of the world. For our knowledge 
of the laws of the motions of the planets and 
satellites is far more complete and exact, far 
more thorough and satisfactory, than the know- 
ledge which we possess in any other department 
of Natural Philosophy. Our acquaintance 
with the laws of the solar system is such, that 
we can calculate the precise place and motion 
of most of its parts at any period, past or future, 
however remote ; and we can refer the changes 
which take place in these circumstances to their 
proximate cause, the attraction of one mass of 



150 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



matter to another, acting between all the parts 
of the universe. 

If, therefore, we trace indications of the Di- 
vine care, either in the form of the laws which 
prevail among the heavenly bodies, or in the 
arbitrary quantities which such laws involve ; 
(according to the distinction explained in the 
former part of this work ;) we may expect that 
our examples of such care, though they may be 
less numerous and obvious, will be more pre- 
cise than they can be in other subjects, where 
the laws of facts are imperfectly known, and 
their causes entirely hid. We trust that this 
will be found to be the case with regard to 
some of the examples which we shall adduce. 



Chapter L 

The Structure of the Solar System. 

N the cosmical considerations which we 
have to offer, we shall suppose the general 
truths concerning the structure of the solar system 
and of the universe, which have been established 
by astronomers and mathematicians, to be known 
to the reader. It is not necessary to go into 
much detail on this subject. The five planets 
known to the ancients, Mercury, Venus, Mars, 



SOLAR SYSTEM. 



151 



Jupiter, Saturn, revolve round the sun, at dif- 
ferent distances, in orbits nearly circular, and 
nearly in one plane. Between Venus and Mars, 
our Earth, herself one of the planets, revolves in 
like manner. Beyond Saturn, Uranus has been 
discovered describing an orbit of the same kind , 
and between Mars and Jupiter, four smaller 
bodies perform their revolutions in orbits some- 
what less regular than the rest. These planets 
are all nearly globular, and all revolve upon 
their axes. Some of them are accompanied by 
satellites, or attendant bodies which revolve 
about them ; and these bodies also have their 
orbits nearly circular, and nearly in the same 
plane as the others, Saturn's ring is a solitary 
example, so far as we know, of such an appen- 
dage to a planet. 

These circular motions of the planets round the 
sun, and of the satellites round their primary 
planets, are all kept going by the attraction of 
the respective central bodies, which restrains the 
corresponding revolving bodies from flying off. 
It is perhaps not very easy to make this oper- 
ation clear to common apprehension. We can- 
not illustrate it by a comparison with any ma- 
chine of human contrivance and fabrication : in 
such machines everything goes on by contact 
and impulse : pressure, and force of all kinds, is 
exercised and transferred from one part to an- 
other, by means of a material connexion : by rods, 
ropes, fluids, gases. In the machinery of the 



152 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



universe, there is, so far as we know, no mate- 
rial connexion between the parts which act on 
each other. In the solar system no part touches 
or drives another : all the bodies affect each 
other at a distance, as the magnet affects the 
needle. The production and regulation of such 
effects, if attempted by our mechanicians, would 
require great skill and nicety of adjustment ; but 
our artists have not executed any examples of 
this sort of machinery, by reference to which 
we can illustrate the arrangements of the solar 
system. 

Perhaps the following comparison may serve 
to explain the kind of adjustments of which we 
shall have to speak. If there be a wide shal- 
low round basin of smooth marble, and if we 
take a smooth ball, as a billiard ball or a mar- 
ble pellet, and throw it along the surface of the 
inside of the basin, the ball will generally make 
many revolutions round the inside of the bowl, 
gradually tending to the bottom in its motion. 
The gradual diminution of the motion, and con- 
sequent tendency of the ball to the bottom of 
the bowl, arises from the friction ; and in or- 
der to make the motion correspond to that 
which takes place through the action of a cen- 
tral force, we must suppose this friction to be 
got rid of. In that case, the ball, once set a 
going, would run round the basin for ever, de- 
scribing either a circle, or various kinds of 
ovals, according to the way in which it was 



SOLAR SYSTEM. 



153 



originally thrown ; whether quickly or slowly, 
and whether more or less obliquely along the 
surface. 

Such a motion would be capable of the same 
kind of variety, and the same sort of adjust- 
ments, as the motion of a body revolving about 
a larger one by means of a central force. Per- 
haps the reader may understand what kind of 
adjustments these are, by supposing such a bowl 
and ball to be used for a game of skill. If the 
object of the players be to throw the pellet along 
the surface of the basin, so that after describing 
its curved path it shall pass through a small 
hole in a barrier at some distance from the 
starting point, it will easily be understood that 
some nicety in the regulation of the force and 
direction with which the ball is thrown will be 
necessary for success. In order to obtain a bet- 
ter image of the solar system, we must suppose 
the basin to be very large and the pellet very 
small. And it will easily be understood that as 
many pellets as there are planets might run 
round the bowl at the same time with different 
velocities. Such a contrivance might form a 
planetarium in which the mimic planets would 
be regulated by the laws of motion as the real 
planets are ; instead of being carried by wires 
and wheels, as is done in such machines of the 
common construction : and in this planetarium 
the tendency of the planets to the sun is replaced 
by the tendency of the representative pellets to 



154 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

run down the slope of the bowl. We shall refer 
again to this basin, thus representing the solar 
system with its loose planetary balls. 



Chapter II. 

The Circular Orbits of the Planets round 
the Sun. 

HE orbit which the earth describes round 
the sun is very nearly a circle : the sun is 
about one thirtieth nearer to us in winter than 
in summer. This nearly circular form of the 
orbit, on a little consideration, will appear to be 
a remarkable circumstance. 

Supposing the attraction of a planet towards 
the sun to exist, if the planet were put in motion 
in any part of the solar system, it would describe 
about the sun an orbit of some kind; it might 
be a long oval, or a shorter oval, or an exact 
circle. But if we suppose the result left to 
chance, the chances are infinitely against the last 
mentioned case. There is but one circle ; there- 
are an infinite number of ovals. Any original 
impulse would give some oval, but only one 
particular impulse, determinate in velocity and 
direction, will give a circle. If we suppose the 
planet to be originally projected, it must be pro- 




CIRCULAR ORBITS. 



155 



jected perpendicularly to its distance from the 
sun, and with a certain precise velocity, in 
order that the motion may be circular. 

In the basin to which we have compared the 
solar system, the adjustment requisite to pro- 
duce circular motion would require us to pro- 
ject our pellet so that after running half round 
the surface it should touch a point exactly at an 
equal distance from the centre, on the other 
side, passing neither too high nor too low. And 
the pellet, it may be observed, should be in size 
only one ten thousandth part of the distance 
from the centre, to make the dimensions corre- 
spond with the case of the earth's orbit. If the 
mark were set up and hit we should hardly at- 
tribute the result to chance. 

The earth's orbit, however, is not exactly a 
circle. The mark is not precisely a single point, 
but is a space of the breadth of one thirtieth of 
the distance from the centre. Still this is much 
too near an agreement with the circle to be con- 
sidered as the work of chance. The chances 
were great against the ball passing so nearly at 
the same distance, for there were twenty-nine 
equal spaces through which it might have gone, 
between the mark and the centre, and an inde- 
finite number outside the mark. 

But it is not the earth's orbit alone which is 
nearly a circle : the rest of the planets also ap- 
proach very nearly to that form : Venus more 
nearly still than the earth : Jupiter, Saturn, and 



156 



COSMIC AL ARRANGEMENTS. 



Uranus have a difference of about one-tenth, be- 
tween their greatest and least distances from the 
sun : Mars has his extreme distances in the 
proportion of five to six nearly ; and Mercury 
in the proportion of two to three. The last men- 
tioned case is a considerable deviation, and two 
of the small planets which lie between Mars and 
J upiter, namely Juno and Pallas, exhibit an in- 
equality somewhat greater still ; but the small- 
ness of these bodies, and other circumstances, 
make it probable that there may be particular 
causes for the exception in their case. The or- 
bits of the satellites of the Earth, of J upiter, and, 
of Saturn, are also nearly circular. 

Taking the solar system altogether, the regu- 
larity of its structure is very remarkable. The 
diagram which represents the orbits of the 
planets might have consisted of a number of 
ovals, narrow and wide in all degrees, inter- 
secting and interfering with each other in all 
directions. The diagram does consist, as all who 
have opened a book of astronomy know, of a 
set of figures which appear at first sight con- 
centric circles, and which are very nearly so ; 
no where approaching to any crossing or inter- 
fering, except in the case of the small planets, 
already noticed as irregular. No one, looking 
at this common diagram, can believe that the 
orbits were made to be so nearly circles by 
chance; any more than he can believe that a 
target, such as archers are accustomed to shoot 



CIRCULAR ORBITS. 



157 



at, was painted in concentric circles by the 
accidental dashes of a brush in the hands of a 
blind man. 

The regularity, then, of the solar system ex- 
cludes the notion of accident in the arrangement 
of the orbits of the planets. There must have 
been an express adjustment to produce this cir- 
cular character of the orbits. The velocity and 
direction of the motion of each planet must have 
been subject to some original regulation ; or, as 
it is often expressed, the projectile force must 
have been accommodated to the centripetal 
force. This once done, the motion of each pla- 
net, taken by itself, would go on for ever still 
retaining its circular character, by the laws of 
motion 

If some original cause adjusted the orbits of 
the planets to their circular form and regular 
arrangement, we can hardly avoid including in 
our conception of this cause, the intention and 
will of a Creating Power. We shall consider 
this argument more fully in a succeeding chap- 
ter ; only observing here, that the presiding In- 
telligence which has selected and combined the 
properties of the organic creation, so that they 
correspond so remarkably with the arbitrary 
quantities of the system of the universe, may 
readily be conceived also to have selected the 
arbitrary velocity and direction of each planet's 
motion, so that the adjustment should produce 
a close approximation to a circular motion. 



158 



COSMIC AL ARRANGEMENTS. 



We have argued here only from the regularity 
of the solar system ; from the selection of the 
single symmetrical case and the rejection of all 
the unsymmetrical cases. But this subject may 
be considered in another point of view. The 
system thus selected is not only regular and 
symmetrical, but also it is, so far as we can 
judge, the only one which would answer the 
purpose of the earth, perhaps of the other pla- 
nets, as the seat of animal and vegetable life. If 
the earth's orbit were more excentric, as it is 
called, if for instance the greatest and least dis- 
tances were as three to one, the inequality of 
heat at two seasons of the year would be destruc- 
tive to the existing species of living creatures. 
A circular, or nearly circular, orbit, is the only 
case in which we can have a course of seasons 
such as we have at present, the only case in 
which the climates of the northern and southern 
hemispheres are nearly the same ; and what is 
more clearly important, the only case in which 
the character of the seasons would not vaiy from 
century to century. For if the excentricity of 
the earth's orbit were considerable, the differ- 
ence of heat at different seasons, arising from 
the different distances of the sun, would be com- 
bined with the difference, now the only consi- 
derable one, which depends on the position of 
the earth's axis. And as by the motion of the 
perihelion, or place of the nearest distance of the 
earth to the sun, this nearest distance would fall 



CIRCULAR ORBITS. 



159 



in different ages at different parts of the year, 
the whole distribution of heat through the year 
would thus be gradually subverted. The sum- 
mer and winter of the tropical year, as we have 
it now, being combined with the heat and cold 
of the anomalistic year, a period of different 
length, the difference of the two seasons might 
sometimes be neutralized altogether, and at 
other times exaggerated by the accumulation of 
the inequalities, so as to be intolerable. 

The circular form of the orbit therefore, which, 
from its unique character, appears to be chosen 
with some design, from its effects on the seasons 
appears to be chosen with this design, so appa- 
rent in other parts of creation, of securing the 
welfare of organic life, by a steadfast and regu- 
lar order of the solar influence upon the planet. 



Chapter III. 

The Stability of the Solar System. 

HERE is a consequence resulting from the 
actual structure of the solar system, which 
has been brought to light by the investigations 
of mathematicians concerning the cause and laws 
of its motions, and which has an important bear- 
ing on our argument. It appears that the ar- 




160 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



rangement which at present obtains is precisely 
that which is necessary to secure the stability of 
the system. This point we must endeavour to 
explain. 

If each planet were to revolve round the sun 
without being affected by the other planets, there 
would be a certain degree of regularity in its 
motion ; and this regularity would continue for 
ever. But it appears, by the discovery of the 
law of universal gravitation, that the planets do 
not execute their movements in this insulated 
and independent manner. Each of them is 
acted on by the attraction of all the rest. The 
Earth is constantly drawn by Venus, by Mars, 
by Jupiter, bodies of various magnitudes, per- 
petually changing their distances and positions 
with regard to the Earth ; the Earth in return 
is perpetually drawing these bodies. What, in 
the course of time, will be the result of this 
mutual attraction ? 

All the planets are very small compared with 
the sun, and therefore the derangement which 
they produce in the motion of one of their num- 
ber will be very small in the course of one revo- 
lution. But this gives us no security that the 
derangement may not become very large in the 
course of many revolutions. The cause acts 
perpetually, and it has the whole extent of time 
to work in. Is it not then easily conceivable 
that in the lapse of ages the derangements of the 
- motions of the planets may accumulate, the or- 



STABILITY OF THE SYSTEM. 



161 



bits may change their form, their mutual dis- 
tances may be much increased or much dimin- 
ished? Is it not possible that these changes 
may go on without limit, and end in the com- 
plete subversion and ruin of the system? 

If, for instance, the result of this mutual gra- ' 
vitarion should be to increase considerably the 
excentricity of the earth's orbit, that is to make 
it a longer and longer oval ; or to make the 
moon approach perpetually nearer and nearer 
the earth every revolution ; it is easy to see that 
in the one case our year would change its cha- 
racter, as we have noticed in the last section ; in 
the other, our satellite might finally fall to the 
earth, which must of course bring about a dread- 
ful catastrophe. If the positions of the planetary 
orbits, with respect to that of the earth, were to 
change much, the planets might sometimes come 
very near us, and thus exaggerate the effects of 
their attraction beyond calculable limits. Un- 
der such circumstances, we might have " years 
of unequal length, and seasons of capricious 
temperature, planets and moons of portentous 
size and aspect, glaring and disappearing at un- 
certain intervals ;" tides like deluges, sweeping 
over whole continents ; and, perhaps, the colli- 
sion of two of the planets, and the consequent 
destruction of all organization on both of them. 

Nor is it, on a common examination of the 
history of the solar system, at all clear that there 
is no tendency to indefinite derangement. The 
w. m 



162 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



fact really is, that changes are taking place in 
the motions of the heavenly bodies, which have 
gone on progressively from the first dawn of 
science. The excentricity of the earth's orbit 
has been diminishing from the earliest observa- 
tions to our times. The moon has been moving 
quicker and quicker from the time of the first 
recorded eclipses, and is now in advance, by 
about four times her own breadth, of what her 
place would have been if it had not been affected 
by this acceleration. The obliquity of the 
ecliptic also is in a state of diminution, and is 
now about two-fifths of a degree less than it was 
in the time of Aristotle. Will these changes go 
on without limit or reaction ? If so, we tend by 
natural causes to a termination of the present 
system of things : If not, by what adjustment or 
combination are we secured from such a ten- 
dency ? Is the system stable, and if so, what is 
the condition on which stability depends ? 

To answer these questions is far from easy. 
The mechanical problem which they involve is 
no less than this Having given the directions 
and velocities with which about thirty bodies 
are moving at one time, to find their places and 
motions after any number of ages; each of the 
bodies, all the while, attracting all the others, 
and being attracted by them all. 

It may readily be imagined that this is a pro- 
blem of extreme complexity, when it is considered 
that every new configuration or arrangement 



STABILITY OF THE SYSTEM. 163 

of the bodies will give rise to a new amount of 
action on each ; and every new action to a new 
configuration. Accordingly, the mathematical 
investigation of such questions as the above was 
too difficult to be attempted in the earlier periods 
of the progress of Physical Astronomy. New- 
ton did not undertake to demonstrate either the 
stability or the instability of the system. The 
decision of this point required a great number of 
preparatory steps and simplifications, and such 
progress in the invention and improvement of 
mathematical methods, as occupied the best ma- 
thematicians of Europe for the greater part of 
last century. But, towards the end of that time, 
it was shown by Lagrange and Laplace that the 
arrangements of the solar system are stable : 
that in the long run, the orbits and motions re- 
main unchanged ; and that the changes in the 
orbits, which take place in shorter periods, 
never transgress certain very moderate limits. 
Each orbit undergoes deviations on this side 
and on that of its average state ; but these devia- 
tions are never very great, and it finally recovers 
from them, so that the average is preserved. 
The planets produce perpetual perturbations in 
each other's motions, but these perturbations are 
not indefinitely progressive, they are periodical : 
they reach a maximum value and then diminish. 
The periods which this restoration requires are, 
for the most part, enormous ; not less than thou- 
sands, and, in some instances, millions of years ; 



164 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



and hence it is, that some of these apparent de- 
rangements have been going on in the same di- 
rection since the beginning of the history of 
the world. But the restoration is in the sequel 
as complete as the derangement; and in the 
meantime the disturbance never attains a suffi- 
cient amount seriously to alter the adaptations 
of the system.* 

The same examination of the subject by which 
this is proved, points out also the conditions on 
which this stability depends. u I have succeeded 
in demonstrating/' says Laplace, " that what- 
ever be the masses of the planets, in consequence 
of the fact that they all move in the same 
direction, in orbits of small excentricity, and 
slightly inclined to each other — their secular 
inequalities are periodical and included within 
narrow limits ; so that the planetary system will 
only oscillate about a mean state, and will 
never deviate from it except by a very small 
quantity. The ellipses of the planets have been, 
and always will be, nearly circular. The eclip- 
tic will never coincide with the equator, and the 
entire extent of the variation in its inclination 
cannot exceed three degrees." 

There exists, therefore, it appears, in the 
solar system, a provision for the permanent 
regularity of its motions ; and this provision is 
found in the fact that the orbits of the planets 
are nearly circular, and nearly in the same 

* Laplace Expos, du Syst. du Monde, p. 441 



STABILITY OF THE SYSTEM. 



165 



plane, and the motions all in the same direction, 
namely, from west to east. * 

Now is it probable that the occurrence of these 
conditions of stability in the disposition of the 
solar system is the work of chance? Such a 
supposition appears to be quite inadmissible. 
Any one of the orbits might have had any ex- 
centricity. f In that of Mercury, where it is 
much the greatest, it is only one-fifth. How 

* In this statement of Laplace, however, one remarkable 
provision for the stability of the system is not noticed. The 
planets Mercury and Mars, which have much the largest 
excentricities among the old planets, are those of which the 
masses are much the smallest. The mass of Jupiter is 
more than 2000 times that of either of these planets. If the 
orbit of Jupiter were as excentric as that of Mercury is, all 
the security for the stability of the system, which analysis 
has yet pointed out, would disappear. The earth and the 
smaller planets might in that case change their approxi- 
mately circular orbits into very long ellipses, and thus might 
fall into the sun, or fly off into remote space. 

It is further remarkable that in the newly discovered 
planets, of which the orbits are still more excentric than 
that of Mercury, the masses are still smaller, so that the 
same provision is established in this case also. It does not 
appear that any mathematician has even attempted to point 
out a necessary connexion between the mass of a planet and • 
excentricity of its orbit on any hypothesis. May we not 
then consider this combination of small masses with large 
excentricities, so important to the purposes of the world, as 
a mark of provident care in the Creator 1 

t The excentricity of a planet's orbit is measured bv taking 
the proportion of the difference of the greatest and least 
distances from the sun, to the sum of the same distances. 
Mercury's greatest and least distances are as 2 and 3 ; his 
excentricity therefore is one-fifth. 



166 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

came it to pass that the orbits were not more 
elongated ? A little more or a little less velo- 
city in their original motions would have made 
them so. They might have had any inclination 
to the ecliptic from no degrees to ninety degrees. 
Mercury, which again deviates most widely, is 
inclined 7| degrees, Venus 3f , Saturn 2f , Ju- 
piter 1J, Mars 2. How came it that their mo- 
tions are thus contained within such a narrow 
strip of the sky ? One, or any number of them 
might have moved from east to west : none of 
them does so. And these circumstances, which 
appear to be, each in particular, requisite for 
the stability of the system and the smallness of 
its disturbances, are all found in combination. 
Does not this imply both clear purpose and pro- 
found skill ? 

It is difficult to convey an adequate notion 
of the extreme complexity of the task thus ex- 
ecuted. A number of bodies, all attracting 
each other, are to be projected in such a man- 
ner that their revolutions shall be permanent 
and stable, their mutual perturbations always 
small. If we return to the basin with its rolling 
balls, by which we before represented the solar 
system, we must complicate with new condi- 
tions the trial of skill which we supposed. The 
problem must now be to project at once seven 
such balls, all connected by strings which influ- 
ence their movements, so that each may hit its 
respective mark. And we must further suppose 
that the marks are to be hit after many thousand 



STABILITY OF THE SYSTEM. 



167 



revolutions of the balls. No one will imagine 
that this could be done by accident. 

In fact it is allowed by all those who have con- 
sidered this subject, that such a coincidence of 
the existing state with the mechanical requisites 
of permanency cannot be accidental. Laplace 
has attempted to calculate the probability that it 
is not the result of accident. He takes into ac- 
count, in addition to the motions which we have 
mentioned, the revolutions of the satellites about 
their primaries, and of the sun and planets about 
their axes : and he finds that there is a proba- 
bility, far higher than that which we have for 
the greater part of undoubted historical events, 
that these appearances are not the effect of chance. 
u We ought, therefore/' he says, "to believe, 
with at least the same confidence, that a primi- 
tive cause has directed the planetary motions. " 

The solar system is thus, by the confession of 
all sides, completely different from any thing 
which we might anticipate from the casual oper- 
ation of its known laws. The laws of motion 
are no less obeyed to the letter in the most irre- 
gular than in the most regular motions ; no less 
in the varied circuit of the ball which flies round 
a tennis court, than in the going of a clock ; no 
less in the fantastical jets and leaps which break- 
ers make when they burst in a corner of a rocky 
shore, than in the steady swell of the open sea. 
The laws of motion alone will not produce the 
regularity which we admire in the motions of 



168 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



the heavenly bodies. There must be an origi- 
nal adjustment of the system on which these laws 
are to act ; a selection of the arbitrary quantities 
which they are to involve ; a primitive cause 
which shall dispose the elements in due relation 
to each other ; in order that regular recurrence 
may accompany constant change ; that per- 
petual motion may be combined with perpetual 
stability ; that- derangements which go on in- 
creasing for thousands or for millions of years 
may finally cure themselves ; and that the same 
laws which lead the planets slightly aside from 
their paths, may narrowly limit their deviations, 
and bring them back from their almost imper- 
ceptible wanderings. 

If a man does not deny that any possible pe- 
culiarity in the disposition of the planets with 
regard to the sun could afford evidence of a con- 
trolling and ordering purpose, it seems difficult 
to imagine how he could look for evidence 
stronger than that which there actually is. Of 
all the innumerable possible cases of systems, go- 
verned by the existing laws of force and motion y 
that one is selected which alone produces such 
a steadfast periodicity, such a constant average 
of circumstances, as are, so far as we can con- 
ceive, necessary conditions for the existence of 
organic and sentient life. And this selection is 
so far from being an obvious or easily discovered 
means to this end, that the most profound and 
attentive consideration of the properties of space 



STABILITY OF THE SYSTEM* 169 

and number, with all the appliances and aids 
we can obtain, are barely sufficient to enable us 
to see that the end is thus secured, and that it 
can be secured in no other way. Surely the 
obvious impression which arises from this view 
of the subject is, that the solar system, with its 
adjustments, is the work of an Intelligence, who 
perceives, as self-evident, those truths, to which 
we attain painfully and slowly, and after all im- 
perfectly; who has employed in every part of 
creation refined contrivances, which we can 
only with effort understand ; and who, in in- 
numerable instances, exhibits to us what we 
should look upon as remarkable difficulties re- 
markably overcome, if it were not that, through 
the perfection of the provision, the trace of the 
difficulty is almost obliterated. 



Chapter IV. 

The Sun in the Centre. 

HE next circumstance which we shall no- 
tice as indicative of design in the arrange- 
ment of the material portions of the solar system, 
is the position of the sun, the source of light and 
heat, in the centre of the system. This could 
hardly have occurred by any thing which we can 




170 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

call chance. Let it be granted, that the law of 
gravitation is established, and that we have a 
large mass, with others much smaller in its com- 
parative vicinity. The small bodies may then 
move round the larger, but this will do nothing 
towards making it a sun to them. Their motions 
might take place, the whole system remaining 
still utterly dark and cold, without day or sum- 
mer. In order that we may have something 
more than this blank and dead assemblage of 
moving clods, the machine must be lighted up 
and warmed. Some of the advantages of placing 
the lighting and warming apparatus in the cen- 
tre are obvious to us. It is in this way only 
that we could have those regular periodical re- 
turns of solar influence, which, as we have seen, 
are adapted to the constitution of the living crea- 
tion. And we can easily conceive, that there 
may be other incongruities in a system with a 
travelling sun, of which we can only conjecture 
the nature. No one probably will doubt that 
the existing system, with the sun in the centre, 
is better than any one of a different kind would 
be. 

Now this lighting and warming by a central 
sun are something superadded to the mere me- 
chanical arrangements of the universe. There 
is no apparent reason why the largest mass of 
gravitating matter should diffuse inexhaustible 
supplies of light and heat in all directions, while 
the other masses are merely passive with respect 



THE SUN IN THE CENTRE. 



171 



to such influences. There is no obvious con- 
nexion between mass and luminousness, or tem- 
perature. No one, probably, will contend that 
the materials of our system are necessarily lumi- 
nous or hot. According to the conjectures of 
astronomers, the heat and light of the sun do 
not reside in its mass, but in a coating which 
lies on its surface. If such a coating were fixed 
there by the force of universal gravitation, how 
could we avoid having a similar coating on the 
surface of the earth, and of all the other globes 
of the system. If light consists in the vibrations 
of an ether, which we have mentioned as a pro- 
bable opinion, why has the sun alone the power 
of exciting such vibrations ? If light be the 
emission of material particles, why does the sun 
alone emit such particles? Similar questions 
may be asked, with regard to heat, whatever be 
the theory we adopt on that subject. Here then 
we appear to find marks of contrivance. The 
sun might become, we will suppose, the centre 
of the motions of the planets by mere mecha- 
nical causes : but what caused the centre of 
their motions to be also the source of those vivi- 
fying influences ? Allowing that no interposition 
was requisite to regulate the revolutions of the 
system, yet observe what a peculiar arrangement 
in other respects was necessary, in order that 
these revolutions might produce days and sea- 
sons ! The machine will move of itself, we may 
grant : but who constructed the machine, so 



172 COSMIC AL ARRANGEMENTS. 

that its movements might answer the purposes 
of life ? How was the candle placed upon the 
candlestick ? how was the fire deposited on the 
hearth, so that the comfort and well-being of the 
family might be secured? Did these too fall 
into their places by the casual operation of gra- 
vity ? and, if not, is there not here a clear evi- 
dence of intelligent design, of arrangement with 
a benevolent end? 

This argument is urged with great force by 
Newton himself. In his first letter to Bentley, 
he allows that matter might form itself into 
masses by the force of attraction. " And thus," 
says he, "might the sun and fixed stars be formed, 
supposing the matter were of a lucid nature. 
But how the matter should divide itself into two 
sorts ; and that part of it which is fit to compose 
a shining body should fall down into one mass, 
and make a sun ; and the rest, which is fit to 
compose an opake body, should coalesce, not 
into one great body, like the shining matter, but 
into many little ones ; or if the sun at first were 
an opake body like the planets, or the planets 
lucid bodies like the sun, how he alone should 
be changed into a shining body, whilst all they 
continue opake ; or all they be changed into 
opake ones, while he continued unchanged : I 
do not think explicable by mere natural causes, 
but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and 
contrivance of a voluntary Agent." 



173 



Chapter V. 
The Satellites. 

l. WMSi PERSON of ordinary feelings, who, 
lllllll on a fine moonlight night, sees our sa- 
tellite pouring her mild radiance on field and 
town, path and moor, will probably not only be 
disposed to " bless the useful light," but also to 
believe that it was " ordained" for that purpose ; 
— that the lesser light was made to rule the night 
as certainly as the greater light was made to 
rule the day. 

Laplace, however, does not assent to this be- 
lief. He observes, that " some partisans of final 
causes have imagined that the moon was given 
to the earth to afford light during the night :" 
but he remarks that this cannot be so, for that 
we are often deprived at the same time of the 
light of the sun and the moon ; and he points 
out how the moon might have been placed so as 
to be always " full." 

That the light of the moon affords, to a certain 
extent, a supplement to the light of the sun, will 
hardly be denied. If we take man in a condi- 
tion in which he uses artificial light scantily only, 
or not at all, there can be no doubt that the moon- 
light nights are for him a very important addi- 



174 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



tion to the time of daylight. And as a small 
proportion only of the whole number of nights 
are without some portion of moonlight, the fact 
that sometimes both luminaries are invisible very 
little diminishes the value of this advantage. 
Why we have not more moonlight, either in du- 
ration or in quantity, is an inquiry which a phi- 
losopher could hardly be tempted to enter upon, 
by any success which has attended previous 
speculations of a similar nature. Why should 
not the moon be ten times as large as she is ? 
Why should not the pupil of man's eye be ten 
times as large as it is, so as to receive more of 
the light which does arrive ? We do not conceive 
that our inability to answer the latter question 
prevents our knowing that the eye was made for 
seeing : nor does our inability to answer the for- 
mer, disturb our persuasion that the moon was 
made to give light upon the earth. 

Laplace suggests that if the moon had been 
placed at a certain distance beyond the earth, 
it would have revolved about the sun in the 
same time as the earth does, and would have 
always presented to us a full moon. For this 
purpose it must have been about four times as 
far from us as it really is ; and would therefore, 
other things remaining unchanged, have only 
been one sixteenth as large to the eye as our pre- 
sent full moon. We shall not dwell on the dis- 
cussion of this suggestion, for the reason just 
intimated. But we may observe that in such a 



THE SATELLITES. 



175 



system as Laplace proposes, it is not yet proved, 
we believe, that the arrangement would be stable, 
under the influence of the disturbing forces. 
And we may add that such an arrangement, in 
which the motion of one body has a coordinate 
reference to two others, as the motion of the 
moon on this hypothesis would have to the sun 
and the earth, neither motion being subordinate 
to the other, is contrary to the whole known 
analogy of cosmical phenomena, and therefore 
has no claim to our notice as a subject of dis- 
cussion. 

2. In turning our consideration to the satel- 
lites of the other planets of our system, there is 
one fact which immediately arrests our atten- 
tion the number of such attendant bodies ap- 
pears to increase as we proceed to planets farther 
and farther from the sun. Such at least is the 
general rule. Mercury and Venus, the planets 
nearest the sun, have no such attendants, the 
Earth has one. Mars, indeed, who is still far- 
ther removed, has none ; nor have the minor 
planets, J uno, Vesta, Ceres, Pallas ; so that the 
rule is only approximately verified. But Jupi- 
ter, who is at five times the earth's distance, has 
four satellites; and Saturn, who is again at a 
distance nearly twice as great, has seven, besides 
that most extraordinary phenomenon his ring, 
which, for purposes of illumination, is equivalent 
to many thousand satellites. Of Uranus it is 
difficult to speak, for his great distance renders 



176 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



it almost impossible to observe the smaller cir- 
cumstances of his condition. It does not appear 
at all probable that he has a ring, like Saturn ; 
but he has at least five satellites which are vi- 
sible to us, at the enormous distance of 900 mil- 
lions of miles ; and we believe that the astro- 
nomer will hardly deny that he may possibly have 
thousands of smaller ones circulating about him. 

But leaving conjecture, and taking only the 
ascertained cases of Venus, the Earth, Jupiter, 
and Saturn, we conceive that a person of com- 
mon understanding will be strongly impressed 
with the persuasion that the satellites are placed 
in the system with a view to compensate for the 
diminished light of the sun at greater distances. 
The smaller planets, Juno, Vesta, Ceres, and 
Pallas, differ from the rest in so many ways, and 
suggest so many conjectures of reasons for such 
differences, that we should almost expect to find 
them exceptions to such a rule. Mars is a more 
obvious exception. Some persons might con- 
jecture from this case, that the arrangement itself, 
like other useful arrangements, has been brought 
about by some wider law which we have not yet 
detected. But whether or not we entertain such 
a guess, (it can be nothing more,) we see in 
other parts of creation, so many examples of ap- 
parent exceptions to rules, which are afterwards 
found to be capable of explanation, or to be pro- 
vided for by particular contrivances, that no one, 
familiar with such contemplations, will, by one 



THE SATELLITES. 



177 



anomaly, be driven from the persuasion that 
the end which the arrangements of the satellites 
seem suited to answer is really one of the ends 
of their creation. 



Chapter VI. 
The Stability of the Ocean, 

HAT is meant by the stability of the ocean 
may perhaps be explained by means of the 
following illustration. If we suppose the whole 
globe of the Earth to be composed of water, a, 
sphere of cork immersed in any part of it, would 
come to the surface of the water, except it were 
placed exactly at the centre of the earth ; and 
even if it were so placed, the slightest displace- 
ment of the cork sphere would end in its rising 
and floating. This would be the case whatever 
were the size of the cork sphere, and even if it 
were so large as to leave comparatively little room 
for the water ; and the result would be nearly 
the same, if the cork sphere, when in its central 
position, had on its surface prominences which 
projected above the surface of the water. Now 
this brings us to the case in which we have a 
globe resembling our present earth, composed 
like it of water and of a solid centre, with islands 
and continents, but having these solid parts all 

W. N 




178 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



made of cork, And it appears by the preceding 
reasoning, that in this case, if there were to be 
any disturbance either of the solid or fluid parts, 
the solid parts would rise from the centre of the 
watery sphere as far as they could : that is, all 
the water would run to one side and leave the 
land on the other. Such an ocean would be in 
unstable equilibrium. 

Now a question naturally occurs, is the equi- 
librium of our present ocean of this unstable kind, 
or is it stable ? The sea, after its most violent 
agitations, appears to return to its former state 
of repose ; but may not some extraordinary cause 
produce in it some derangement which may go 
on increasing till the waters all rush one way, 
and thus drown the highest mountains ? And if 
we are safe from this danger, what are the con- 
ditions by which we are so secured ? 

The illustration which we have employed ob- 
viously suggests the answer to this question ; 
namely, that the equilibrium is unstable, so long 
as the solid parts are of such a kind as to float 
in the fluid parts ; and of course we should ex- 
pect that the equilibrium will be stable whenever 
the contrary is the case, that is, when the solid 
parts of the earth are of greater specific gravity 
than the sea. A more systematic mathematical 
calculation has conducted Laplace to a demon- 
stration of this result. 

The mean specific gravity of the earth appears 
to be about Jive times that of water, so that the 



STABILITY OF THE OCEAN. 



179 



condition of the stability of the ocean is abun- 
dantly fulfilled. And the provision by which 
this stability is secured was put in force through 
the action of those causes, whatever they were, 
which made the density of the solid materials 
and central parts of the earth greater than the 
density of the incumbent fluid. 

When we consider, however, the manner in 
which the wisdom of the Creator, even in those 
cases in which his care is most apparent, as in 
the structure of animals, works by means of 
intermediate causes and general laws, we shall 
not be ready to reject all belief of an end in 
such a case as this, merely because the means 
are mechanical agencies. Laplace says, " in 
virtue of gravity, the most dense of the strata 
of the earth are those nearest to the centre ; 
and thus the mean density exceeds that of the 
waters which cover it ; which suffices to secure 
the stability of the equilibrium of the seas, and 
to put a bridle upon the fury of the waves." 
This statement, if exact, would not prove that 
He who subjected the materials of the earth to 
the action of gravity did not intend to restrain 
the rage of the waters : but the statement is not 
true in fact. The lower strata, so far as man 
has yet examined, are very far from being con- 
stantly, or even generally, heavier than the 
superincumbent ones. And certainly solidifica- 
tion by no means implies a greater density than 
fluidity : the density of J upiter is one fourth, 



180 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



that of Saturn less than one seventh, of that of 
the earth. If an ocean of water were poured 
into the cavities upon the surface of Saturn, its 
equilibrium would not be stable. It would leave 
its bed on one side of the globe ; and the planet 
would finally be composed of one hemisphere 
of water and one of land. If the Earth had an 
ocean of a fluid six times as heavy as water, 
(quicksilver is thirteen times as heavy,) we 
should have, in like manner, a dry and a fluid 
hemisphere. Our inland rivers would probably 
never be able to reach the shores, but would be 
dried up on their way, like those which run in 
torrid desarts ; perhaps the evaporation from the 
ocean would never reach the inland mountains, 
and we should have no rivers at all. Without 
attempting to imagine the details of such a con- 
dition, it is easy to see, that to secure the exist- 
ence of a different one is an end which is in har- 
mony with all that we see of the preserving care 
displayed in the rest of creation.* 

* The stability of the axis of rotation about which the 
earth revolves has sometimes been adduced as an instance 
of preservative care. The stability, however, would follow 
necessarily, if the earth, or its superficial parts, were origi- 
nally fluid ; and that they were so is an opinion widely 
received, both among astronomers and geologists. The 
original fluidity of the earth is probably a circumstance de- 
pending upon the general scheme of creation ; and cannot 
with propriety be considered with reference to one particu- 
lar result. We shall therefore omit any further considera- 
tion of this argument. 



181 



Chapter VII. 
The Nebular Hypothesis, 

E have referred to Laplace, as a profound 
mathematician, who has strongly ex- 
pressed the opinion, that the arrangement by 
which the stability of the solar system is secured 
is not the result of chance ; that "a primitive 
cause has directed the planetary motions." This 
author, however, having arrived, as we have 
done, at this conviction, does not draw from it 
the conclusion which has appeared to us so irre- 
sistible, that " the admirable arrangement of the 
solar system cannot but be the work of an intel- 
ligent and most powerful being." He quotes 
these expressions, which are those of Newton, 
and points at them as instances where that great 
philosopher had deviated from the method of 
true philosophy. He himself proposes an hy- 
pothesis concerning the nature of the primitive 
cause of which he conceives the existence to be 
thus probable : and this hypothesis, on account 
of the facts which it attempts to combine, the 
view of the universe which it presents, and the 
eminence of the person by whom it is pro- 
pounded, deserves our notice. 

l . Laplace conjectures that in the original con- 




182 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



dition of the solar system, the sun revolved upon 
his axis, surrounded by an atmosphere which, 
in virtue of an excessive heat, extended far 
beyond the orbits of all the planets, the planets 
as yet having no existence. The heat gradually 
diminished, and as the solar atmosphere con- 
tracted by cooling, the rapidity of its rotation in- 
creased by the laws of rotatory motion, and an 
exterior zone of vapour was detached from the 
rest, the central attraction being no longer able to 
overcome the increased centrifugal force. This 
zone of vapour might in some cases retain its 
form, as we see it in Saturn's ring ; but more usu- 
ally the ring of vapour would break into several 
masses, and these would generally coalesce into 
one mass, which would revolve about the sun. 
Such portions of the solar atmosphere, aban- 
doned successively at different distances, would 
form " planets in the state of vapour." These 
masses of vapour, it appears from mechanical 
considerations, would have each its rotatory mo- 
tion, and as the cooling of the vapour still went 
on, would each produce a planet, which might 
have satellites and rings, formed from the planet 
in the same manner as the planets were formed 
from the atmosphere of the sun. 

It may easily be conceived that all the pri- 
mary motions of a system so produced would be 
nearly circular, nearly in the plane of the ori- 
ginal equator of the solar rotation, and in the 



NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



183 



direction of that rotation. Reasons are offered 
also to show that the motions of the satellites 
thus produced and the motions of rotation of 
the planets must be in the same direction. And 
thus it is held that the hypothesis accounts for 
the most remarkable circumstances in the struc- 
ture of the solar system: namely, the motions 
of the planets in the same direction, and almost 
in the same plane ; the motions of the satellites 
in the same direction as those of the planets ; 
the motions of rotation of these different bodies 
still in the same direction as the other motions, 
and in planes not much different ; the small 
excentricity of the orbits of the planets, upon 
which condition, along with some of the pre- 
ceding ones, the stability of the system depends ; 
and the position of the source of light and heat 
in the centre of the system. 

It is not necessary for the purpose, nor suit- 
able to the plan of the present treatise, to 
examine, on physical grounds, the probability of 
the above hypothesis. It is proposed by its 
author, with great diffidence, as a conjecture 
only. We might, therefore, very reasonably 
put off all discussion of the bearings of this 
opinion upon our views of the government of 
the world, till the opinion itself should have 
assumed a less indistinct and precarious form. 
It can be no charge against our doctrines, that 
there is a difficulty in reconciling with them 



184 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

arbitrary guesses and half-formed theories. We 
shall, however, make a few observations upon 
this nebular hypothesis, as it may be termed. 

2. If we grant, for a moment, the hypothesis, 
it by no means proves that the solar system was 
formed without the intervention of intelligence 
and design. It only transfers our view of the 
skill exercised, and the means employed, to 
another part of the work. For, how came the 
sun and its atmosphere to have such materials, 
such motions, such a constitution, that these 
consequences followed from their primordial 
condition ? How came the parent vapour thus 
to be capable of coherence, separation, con- 
traction, solidification ? How came the laws of 
its motion, attraction, repulsion, condensation, 
to be so fixed, as to lead to a beautiful and har- 
monious system in the end ? How came it to 
be neither too fluid nor too tenacious, to con- 
tract neither too quickly nor too slowly, for the 
successive formation of the several planetary 
bodies? How came that substance, which at 
one time was a luminous vapour, to be at a sub- 
sequent period, solids and fluids of many vari- 
ous kinds ? What but design and intelligence 
prepared and tempered this previously existing 
element, so that it should by its natural changes 
produce such an orderly system? 

And if in this way we suppose a planet to be 
produced, what sort of a body would it be ? — 
something, it may be presumed, resembling a 



NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



185 



large meteoric stone. How comes this mass to 
be covered with motion and organization, with 
life and happiness ? What primitive cause 
stocked it with plants and animals, and pro- 
duced all the wonderful and subtle contrivances 
which we find in their structure, all the wide 
and profound mutual dependencies which w€ 
trace in their economy ? Was man, with his 
thought and feeling, his powers and hopes, his 
will and conscience, also produced as an ulti- 
mate result of the condensation of the solar 
atmosphere ? Except we allow a prior purpose 
and intelligence presiding over this material 
" primitive cause," how irreconcilable is it with 
the evidence which crowds in upon us on every 
side ! 

3. In the next place, we may observe con- 
cerning this hypothesis, that it carries us back 
to the beginning of the present system of things ; 
but that it is impossible for our reason to stop 
at the point thus presented to it. The sun, the 
earth, the planets, the moons were brought into 
their present order out of a previous state, and, 
as is supposed in the theory, by the natural 
operation of laws. But how came that previous 
state to exist? We are compelled to suppose 
that it, in like manner, was educed from a still 
prior state of things ; and this, again, must have 
been the result of a condition prior still. Nor 
is it possible for us to find, in the tenets of the 
nebular hypothesis, any resting place or satis- 



186 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



faction for the mind. The same reasoning fa- 
culty, which seeks for the origin of the present 
system of things, and is capable of assenting to, 
or dissenting from the hypothesis propounded 
by Laplace as an answer to this inquiry, is ne- 
cessarily led to seek, in the same manner, for 
the origin of any previous system of things, out 
of which the present may appear to have grown : 
and must pursue this train of enquiries unre- 
mittingly, so long as the answer which it re- 
ceives describes a mere assemblage of matter and 
motion ; since it would be to contradict the laws 
of matter and the nature of motion, to suppose 
such an assemblage to be the first condition. 

The reflection just stated, may be illustrated 
by the further consideration of the Nebular 
Hypothesis. This opinion refers us, for the 
origin of the solar system, to a sun surrounded 
with an atmosphere of enormously elevated tem- 
perature, revolving and cooling. But as we 
ascend to a still earlier period, what state of 
things are we to suppose ?— a still higher tem- 
perature, a still more diffused atmosphere. La- 
place conceives that, in its primitive state, the 
sun consisted in a diffused luminosity so as to 
resemble those nebulae among the fixed stars, 
which are seen by the aid of the telescope, and 
which exhibit a nucleus, more or less brilliant, 
surrounded by a cloudy brightness. " This an- 
terior state was itself preceded by other states, 
in which the nebulous matter was more and 



NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



187 



more diffuse, the nucleus being less and less 
luminous. We arrive," Laplace says, " in this 
manner, at a nebulosity so diffuse, that its ex- 
istence could scarcely be suspected." 

" Such is," he adds, " in fact, the first state 
of the nebulas which Herschel carefully observed 
by means of his powerful telescopes. He traced 
the progress of condensation, not indeed on one 
nebula, for this progress can only become per- 
ceptible to us in the course of centuries ; but in 
the assemblage of nebulae ; much in the same 
manner as in a large forest we may trace the 
growth of trees among the examples of different 
ages which stand side by side. He saw in the 
first place the nebulous matter dispersed in 
patches, in the different parts of the sky. He 
saw in some of these patches this matter feebly 
condensed round one or more faint nuclei. In 
other nebulas, these nuclei were brighter in pro- 
portion to the surrounding nebulosity : when by 
a further condensation the atmosphere of each 
nucleus becomes separate from the others, the 
result is multiple nebulous stars, formed by bril- 
liant nuclei very near each other, and each sur- 
rounded by an atmosphere : sometimes the nebu- 
lous matter condensing in a uniform manner has 
produced nebulous systems which are called 
planetary. Finally, a still greater degree of 
condensation transforms all these nebulous sys- 
tems into stars. The nebulas, classed according 
to this philosophical view, indicate with extreme 



188 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



probability their future transformation into stars, 
and the anterior nebulous condition of the stars 
which now exist." 

It appears then that the highest point to which 
this series of conjectures can conduct us, is 
" an extremely diffused nebulosity," attended, 
we may suppose, by a far higher degree of heat, 
than that which, at a later period of the hypo- 
thetical process, keeps all the materials of our 
earth and planets in a state of vapour. Now is 
it not impossible to avoid asking, whence was 
this light, this heat, this diffusion ? How came 
the laws which such a state implies, to be already 
in existence ? Whether light and heat produce 
their effects by means of fluid vehicles or other- 
wise, they have complex and varied laws which 
indicate the existence of some subtle machinery 
for their action. When and how was this machi- 
nery constructed ? Whence too that enormous 
expansive power which the nebulous matter is 
supposed to possess ? And if, as would seem 
to be supposed in this doctrine, all the material 
ingredients of the earth existed in this diffuse 
nebulosity, either in the state of vapour, or in 
some state of still greater expansion, whence 
were they and their properties ? how came there 
to be of each simple substance which now enters 
into the composition of the universe, just so 
much and no more ? Do we not, far more than 
ever, require an origin of this origin? an expla- 
nation of this explanation ? Whatever may be 



NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



189 



the merits of the opinion as a physical hy- 
pothesis, with which we do not here meddle, 
can it for a moment prevent our looking beyond 
the hypothesis, to a First Cause, an Intelligent 
Author, an origin proceeding from free volition, 
not from material necessity ? 

But again : let us ascend to the highest point 
of the hypothetical progression : let us suppose 
the nebulosity diffused throughout all space, so 
that its course of running into patches is not yet 
begun. How are we to suppose it distributed ? 
Is it equably diffused in every part? clearly 
not; for if it were, what should cause it to 
gather into masses, so various in size, form and 
arrangement ? The separation of the nebulous 
matter into distinct nebulae implies necessarily 
some original inequality of distribution ; some 
determining circumstances in its primitive con- 
dition. Whence were these circumstances ? 
this inequality ? we are still compelled to seek 
some ulterior agency and power. 

Why must the primeval condition be one of 
change at all? Why should not the nebulous 
matter be equably diffused throughout space, 
and continue for ever in its state of equable 
diffusion, as it must do, from the absence of all 
cause to determine the time and manner of its 
separation ? why should this nebulous matter 
grow cooler and cooler ? why should it not re- 
tain for ever the same degree of heat, whatever 
heat be ? If heat be a fluid, if to cool be to part 



S90 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



with this fluid, as many philosophers suppose, 
what becomes of the fluid heat of the nebulous 
matter, as the matter cools down? Into what 
unoccupied region does it find its way ? 

Innumerable questions of the same kind might 
be asked, and the conclusion to be drawn is, 
that every new physical theory which we in- 
clude in our view of the universe, involves us in 
new difficulties and perplexities, if we try to 
erect it into an ultimate and final account of 
the existence and arrangement of the world in 
which we live. With the evidence of such 
theories, considered as scientific generalizations 
of ascertained facts, with their claims to a place 
in our natural philosophy, we have here nothing 
to do. But if they are put forwards as a disclo- 
sure of the ultimate cause of that which occurs, 
and as superseding the necessity of looking 
further or higher ; if they claim a place in our 
Natural Theology, as well as our Natural Phi- 
losophy ; we conceive that their pretensions 
will not bear a moment's examination. 

Leaving then to other persons and to future 
ages to decide upon the scientific merits of the 
nebular hypothesis, we conceive that the final 
fate of this opinion can not, in sound reason, 
affect at all the view which we have been en- 
deavouring to illustrate ; — the view of the uni- 
verse as the work of a wise and good Creator. 
Let it be supposed that the point to which this 
hypothesis leads us, is the ultimate point of 



NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



191 



physical science : that the farthest glimpse we 
can obtain of the material universe by our na- 
tural faculties, shows it to us occupied by a 
boundless abyss of luminous matter : still we 
ask, how space came to be thus occupied, how 
matter came to be thus luminous? If we 
establish by physical proofs, that the first fact 
which can be traced in the history of the world, 
is that " there was light we shall still be led, 
even by our natural reason, to suppose that be- 
fore this could occur, " God said, let there be 
light." 



Chapter VIII. 

The Existence of a Resisting Medium in the 
Solar System. 

HE question of a plenum and a vacuum. 
was formerly much debated among those 
who speculated concerning the constitution of 
the universe ; that is, they disputed whether 
the celestial and terrestrial spaces are absolutely 
full, each portion being occupied by some matter 
or other ; or whether there are, between and 
among the material parts of the world, empty 
spaces free from all matter, however rare. This 
question was often treated by means of abstract 
conceptions and d priori reasonings ; and was 
sometimes considered as one in which the result 




192 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



of the struggle between rival systems of phi- 
losophy, the Cartesian and Newtonian for in- 
stance, was involved. It was conceived by 
some that the Newtonian doctrine of the mo- 
tions of the heavenly bodies, according to me- 
chanical laws, required that the space in which 
they moved should be, absolutely and metaphy- 
sically speaking, a vacuum. 

This, however, is not necessary to the truth of 
the Newtonian doctrines, and does not appear 
to have been intended to be asserted by Newton 
himself. Undoubtedly, according to his theory, 
the motions of the heavenly bodies were calcu- 
lated on the supposition that they do move in a 
space void of any resisting fluid ; and the com- 
parison of the places so calculated with the 
places actually observed, (continued for a long 
course of years, and tried in innumerable cases,) 
did not show any difference which implied the 
existence of a resisting fluid. The Newtonian, 
therefore, was justified in asserting that either 
there was no such fluid, or that it was so thin 
and rarefied, that no phenomenon yet examined 
by astronomers was capable of betraying its 
effects. 

This was all that the Newtonian needed or 
ought to maintain ; for his philosophy, founded 
altogether upon observation, had nothing to do 
^ith abstract possibilities and metaphysical ne- 
cessities. And in the same manner in which 
observation and calculation thus showed that 



RESISTING MEDIUM. 



193 



there could be none but a very rare medium 
pervading the solar system, it was left open to 
observation and calculation to prove that there 
was such a medium, if any facts could be dis- 
covered which offered suitable evidence. 

Within the last few years, facts have been ob- 
served which show, in the opinion of some of the 
best mathematicians of Europe, that such a very 
rare medium does really occupy the spaces in 
which the planets move ; and it may be proper 
and interesting to consider the bearing of this 
opinion upon the views and arguments which 
we have had here to present. 

1. Reasons might be offered, founded on the 
universal diffusion of light and on other grounds, 
for believing that the planetary spaces cannot be 
entirely free from matter of some kind ; and 
wherever matter is, we should expect resistance. 
But the facts which have thus led astronomers 
to the conviction that such a resisting medium 
really exists, are certain circumstances occurring 
in the motion of a body revolving round the sun 
which is now usually called Encke's comet. This 
body revolves in a very excentric or oblong orbit, 
its greatest or aphelion distance from the sun, 
and its nearest or perihelion distance, being in 
the proportion of more than ten to one. In this 
respect it agrees with other comets ; but its 
time of revolution about the sun is much less 
than that of the comets which have excited most 
notice ; for while they appear only at long in- 

w. o 



194 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

tervals of years, the body of which we are now 
speaking returns to its perihelion every 1208 
days, or in about three years and one-third. 
Another observable circumstance in this sin- 
gular body, is its extreme apparent tenuity : it 
appears as a loose indefinitely formed speck of 
vapour, through which the stars are visible with 
no perceptible diminution of their brightness. 
This body was first seen by Mechain and Mes- 
sier, in 1786,* but they obtained only two ob- 
servations, whereas three, at least, are requisite 
to determine the path of a heavenly body. Miss 
Herschel discovered it again in 1795, and it 
was observed by several European astronomers. 
In 1805 it was again seen, and again in 1819* 
Hitherto it was supposed that the four comets 
thus observed were all different ; En eke, how- 
ever, showed that the observations could only be 
explained by considering them as returns of the 
same revolving body ; and by doing this, well 
merited that his name should be associated with 
the subject of his discovery. The return of this 
body in 1822, was calculated beforehand, and 
observed in New South Wales, the comet being 
then in the southern part of the heavens ; but 
on comparing the calculated and the observed 
places, Encke concluded that the 'observations 
could not be exactly explained, without sup- 
posing a resisting medium. This comet was 
again generally observed in Europe in 1825 and 
* Airy on Encke's Comet, p. 1. note. 



RESISTING MEDIUM. 



195 



1828, and the circumstances of the last appear- 
ance were particularly favourable for determi- 
ning the absolute amount of the retardation 
arising from the medium, which the other ob- 
servations had left undetermined. 

The effect of this retarding influence is, as 
might be supposed from what has already been 
said, extremely slight ; and would probably not 
have been perceptible at all, but for the loose 
texture and small quantity of matter of the re- 
volving body. It will easily be conceived that 
a body which has perhaps no more solidity or 
coherence than a cloud of dust, or a wreath of 
smoke, will have less force to make its way 
through a fluid medium, however thin, than a 
more dense and compact body would have. In 
atmospheric air much rarefied, a bullet might 
proceed for miles without losing any of its ve- 
locity, while such a loose mass as the comet is 
supposed to be would lose its projectile motion 
in the space of a few yards. This consideration 
will account for the circumstance, that the ex- 
istence of such a medium has been detected by 
observing the motions of Encke's comet, though 
the motions of the heavenly bodies previously 
observed showed no trace of such an impedi- 
ment. 

It will perhaps appear remarkable that a body 
so light and loose as we have described this 
comet to be, should revolve about the sun by 
laws as fixed and certain as those which regulate 



196 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



the motions of those great and solid masses, the 
Earth and J upiter. It is however certain from 
observation, that this comet is acted upon by 
exactly the same force of solar attraction, as the 
other bodies of the system ; and not only so, but 
that it also experiences the same kind of disturb- 
ing force from the action of the other planets, 
which they exercise upon each other. The effect 
of all these causes has been calculated with great 
care and labour ; and the result has been an 
agreement with observation sufficiently close to 
show that these causes really act, but at the 
same time a residual phenomenon (as Sir J. 
Herschel expresses it) has come to light : and 
from this has been collected the inference of a 
resisting medium. 

This medium produces a very small effect upon 
the motion of the comet, as will easily be sup- 
posed from what has been said. By Encke's 
calculation, it appears that the effect of the re- 
sistance, supposing the comet to move in the 
earth's orbit, would be about l-850th of the sun's 
force of the body. The effect of such a resistance 
may appear, at first sight, paradoxical ; it would 
be to make the comet move more slowly, but 
perform its revolutions more quickly. This, how- 
ever, will perhaps be understood if it be con- 
sidered that by moving more slowly the comet 
will be more rapidly drawn towards the centre, 
and that in this way a revolution will be described 
by a shorter path than it was before. It appears, 



RESISTING MEDIUM. 



197 



that in getting round the sun, the comet gains 
more in this way than it loses by the diminution 
of its velocity. The case is much like that of a 
stone thrown in the air ; the stone moves more 
slowly than it would do if there were no air ; but 
yet it comes to the earth sooner than it would do 
on that supposition. 

It appears that the effect of the resistance of 
the ethereal medium, from the first discovery of 
the comet up to the present time, has been to 
diminish the time of revolution by about two 
days : and the comet is ten days in advance of 
the place which it would have reached, if there 
had been no resistance. 

2. The same medium which is thus shown to 
produce an effect upon Encke's comet, must also 
act upon the planets which move through the 
same spaces. The effect upon the planets, how- 
ever, must be very much smaller than the effect 
upon the comet, in consequence of their greater 
quantity of matter. 

It is not easy to assign any probable value, or 
even any certain limit, to the effect of the resist- 
ing medium upon the planets. We are entirely 
ignorant of the comparative mass of the comet, 
and of any of the planets ; and hence, cannot 
make any calculation, founded on such a com- 
parison. Newton has endeavoured to show how 
small the resistance of the medium must be, if 
it exists.* The result of his calculation is, that 

* Principia, b. iii. prop. x. 



198 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

if we take the density of the medium to be that 
which our air will have at 200 miles from the 
earth's surface, supposing the law of diminution 
of density to go on unaltered, and if we suppose 
Jupiter to move in such a medium, he would in 
a million years lose less than a millionth part of 
his velocity. If a planet, revolving about the 
sun, were to lose any portion of its velocity by 
the effect of resistance, it would be drawn pro- 
portionally nearer the sun, the tendency towards 
the centre being no longer sufficiently counter- 
acted by that centrifugal force which arises from 
the body's velocity. And if the resistance were 
to continue to act, the body would be drawn 
perpetually nearer and nearer to the centre,, 
and would describe its revolutions quicker and 
quicker, till at last it would reach the central 
body, and the system would cease to be a system. 

This result is true, however small be the velo- 
city lost by resistance ; the only difference being, 
that when the resistance is small, the time re- 
quisite to extinguish the whole motion will be 
proportionally longer. In all cases the times 
which come under our consideration in problems 
of this kind, are enormous to common appre- 
hension. Thus Encke's comet, according to the 
results of the observations already made, will 
lose, in ten revolutions, or thirty-three years, 
less than l-1000th of its velocity : and if this 
law were to continue, the velocity would not be 
reduced to one-half its present value in less than 



RESISTING MEDIUM. 



199 



seven thousand revolutions or twenty-three thou- 
sand years. If Jupiter were to lose one-mil- 
lionth of his velocity in a million years, (which, 
as has been seen, is far more than can be consi- 
dered in any way probable,) he would require 
seventy millions of years to lose 1 -1000th of the 
velocity ; and a period seven hundred times as 
long to reduce the velocity to one-half. These 
are periods of time which quite overwhelm the 
imagination ; and it is not pretended that the cal- 
culations are made with any pretentions to accu- 
racy. But at the same time it is beyond doubt 
that though the intervals of time thus assigned 
to these changes are highly vague and uncertain, 
the changes themselves must, sooner or later, 
take place, in consequence of the existence of 
the resisting medium. Since there is such a re- 
tarding force perpetually acting, however slight 
it be, it must in the end destroy all the celestial 
motions. It may be millions of millions of years 
before the earth's retardation may perceptibly 
affect the apparent motion of the sun ; but still 
the day will come (if the same Providence which 
formed the system, should permit it to continue 
so long) when this cause will entirely change 
the length of our year and the course of our sea- 
sons, and finally stop the earth's motion round 
the sun altogether. The smallness of the resis- 
tance, however small we choose to suppose it, 
does not allow us to escape this certainty. There 
is a resisting medium ; and, therefore, the move- 



200 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



ments of the solar system cannot go on for ever. 
The moment such a fluid is ascertained to exist? 
the eternity of the movements of the planets be- 
comes as impossible as a perpetual motion on 
the earth. 

3. The vast periods which are brought under 
our consideration in tracing the effects of the 
resisting medium, harmonize with all that we 
learn of the constitution of the universe from 
other sources. Millions, and millions of millions 
of years are expressions that at first sight appear 
fitted only to overwhelm and confound all our 
powers of thought : and such numbers are no 
doubt beyond the limits of any thing which we 
can distinctly conceive. But our powers of con- 
ception are suited rather to the wants and uses 
of common life, than to a complete survey of the 
universe. It is in no way unlikely that the 
whole duration of the solar system should be a 
period immeasurably great in our eyes, though 
demonstrably finite. Such enormous numbers 
have been brought under our notice by all the 
advances we have made in our knowledge of 
nature. The smallness of the objects detected 
by the microscope and of their parts ; — the mul- 
titude of the stars which the best telescopes of 
modern times have discovered in the sky ;— the 
duration assigned to the globe of the earth 
by geological investigation all these results 
require for their probable expression, num- 
bers, which so far as we see, are on the same 



RESISTING MEDIUM. 



201 



gigantic scale as the number of years in which 
the solar system will become entirely deranged. 
Such calculations depend in some degree on our 
relation to the vast aggregate of the works of 
our Creator \ and no person who is accustomed 
to meditate on these subjects will be surprised 
that the numbers which such an occasion re- 
quires should oppress our comprehension. No 
one who has dwelt on the thought of a universal 
Creator and Preserver, will be surprised to find 
the conviction forced upon the mind of every 
new train of speculation, that viewed in reference 
to Him, our space is a point, our time a moment, 
our millions a handful, our permanence a quick 
decay. 

Our knowledge of the vast periods, both geo- 
logical and astronomical, of which we have 
spoken, is most slight. It is in fact little more 
than that such periods exist 5 that the surface of 
the earth has, at wide intervals of time, under- 
gone great changes in the disposition of land and 
water, and in the forms of animal life ; and that 
the motions of the heavenly bodies round the 
sun are affected, though with inconceivable 
slowness, by a force which must end by derang- 
ing them altogether. It would therefore be 
rash to endeavour to establish any analogy be- 
tween the periods thus disclosed ; but we may 
observe that they agree in this, that they reduce 
all things to the general rule of finite duration. 
As all the geological states of which we find 



202 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

evidence in the present state of the earth, have 
had their termination, so also the astronomical 
conditions under which the revolutions of the 
earth itself proceed, involve the necessity of a 
future cessation of these revolutions. 

The contemplative person may well be struck 
by this universal law of the creation. We are 
in the habit sometimes of contrasting the tran- 
sient destiny of man with the permanence of the 
forests, the mountains, the ocean, — with the 
unwearied circuit of the sun. But this contrast 
is a delusion of our own imagination : the dif- 
ference is after all but one of degree. The 
forest tree endures for its centuries and then 
decays ; the mountains crumble and change, 
and perhaps subside in some convulsion of na- 
ture ; the sea retires, and the shore ceases to 
resound with the ' everlasting' voice of the 
ocean : such reflections have already crowded 
upon the mind of the geologist ; and it now 
appears that the courses of the heavens them- 
selves are not exempt from the universal law of 
decay ; that not only the rocks and the moun- 
tains, but the sun and the moon have the sen- 
tence " to end" stamped upon their foreheads. 
They enjoy no privilege beyond man except a 
longer respite. The ephemeron perishes in an 
hour; man endures for his threescore years 
and ten ; an empire, a nation, numbers its cen- 
turies, it may be its thousands of years ; the 
continents and islands which its dominion in- 



RESISTING MEDIUM. 



203 



eludes, have perhaps their date, as those which 
preceded them have had ; and the very revolu- 
tions of the sky by which centuries are num- 
bered will at last languish and stand still. 

To dwell on the moral and religious reflexions 
suggested by this train of thought is not to our 
present ""purpose ; but we may observe that it 
introduces a homogeneity , so to speak, into the 
government of the universe. Perpetual change, 
perpetual progression, increase and diminution, 
appear to be the rules of the material world, and 
to prevail without exception. The smaller por- 
tions of matter which we have near us, and the 
larger, which appear as luminaries at a vast dis- 
tance, different as they are in our mode of con- 
ceiving them, obey the same laws of motion ; 
and these laws produce the same results ; in both 
cases motion is perpetually destroyed, except it 
be repaired by some living power ; in both cases 
the relative rest of the parts of a material system 
is the conclusion to which its motion tends. 

4. It may perhaps appear to some, that this 
acknowledgment of the tendency of the system 
to derangement through the action of a resisting 
medium is inconsistent with the argument which 
we have drawn in a previous chapter, from the 
provisions for its stability. In reality, however, 
the two views are in perfect agreement, so far as 
our purpose is concerned. The main point 
which we had to urge, in the consideration of 
the stability of the system, was, not that it is 



204 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

constructed to last for ever, but that while it 
lasts, the deviations from its mean condition 
are very small. It is this property which fits 
the world for its uses. To maintain either the 
past or the future eternity of the world, does 
not appear consistent with physical principles, 
as it certainly does not fall in with the convic- 
tions of the religious man, in whatever way 
obtained. We conceive that this state of things 
has had a beginning ; we conceive that it will 
have an end. But in the mean time we find it 
fitted, by a number of remarkable arrange- 
ments, to be the habitation of living creatures. 
The conditions which secure the stability, and 
the smallness of the perturbations of the system, 
are among these provisions. If the excentricity 
of the orbit of Venus, or of J upiter, were much 
greater than it is, not only might some of the 
planets, at the close of ages, fall into the sun or 
fly off into infinite space, but also, in the inter- 
mediate time, the earth's orbit might become 
much more excentric ; the course of the seasons 
and the average of temperature might vary from 
what they now are, so as to injure or destroy 
the whole organic creation. By certain original 
arrangements these destructive oscillations are 
prevented. So long as the bodies continue to 
revolve, their orbits will not be much different 
from what they now are. And this result is not 
affected by the action of the resisting medium. 
Such a medium cannot increase the small ex- 



RESISTING MEDIUM. 



205 



centricities of the orbits. The range of the 
periodical oscillations of heat and cold will not 
be extended by the mechanical effect of the 
medium, nor would be, even if its density were 
incomparably greater than it is. The resisting 
medium therefore does not at all counteract that 
which is most important in the provision for the 
permanency of the solar system. If the stability 
of the system had not been secured by the 
adjustments which we described in a former 
chapter, the course of the seasons might have 
been disturbed to an injurious or even destruc- 
tive extent in the course of a few centuries, or 
even within the limits of one generation ; by 
the effect of the resisting medium, the order of 
nature remains unchanged for a period, com- 
pared with which the known duration of the 
human race is insignificant. 

But, it may be objected, the effect of the 
medium must be ultimately to affect the dura- 
tion of the earth's revolution round the sun, and 
thus to derange those adaptations which depend 
on the length of the year. And, without ques- 
tion, if we permit ourselves to look forwards to 
that inconceivably distant period at which the 
effect of the medium will become sensible, this 
must be allowed to be true, as has been already 
stated. Millions, and probably millions of mil- 
lions, of years express inadequately the distance 
of time at which this cause would produce a 
serious effect. That the machine of the universe 



206 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



is so constructed that it may answer its purposes 
for such a period, is surely sufficient proof of the 
skill of its workmanship, and of the reality of its 
purpose : and those persons, probably, who are 
best convinced that it is the work of a wise and 
good Creator, will be least disposed to consider 
the system as imperfect, because in its present 
condition it is not fitted for eternity. 

5. The doctrine of a resisting medium leads 
us towards a point which the Nebular Hypo- 
thesis assumes ; — a beginning of the present 
order of things. There must have been a com- 
mencement of the motions now going on in the 
solar system. Since these motions, when once 
begun, would be deranged and destroyed in a 
period which, however large, is yet finite, it is 
obvious we cannot carry their origin indefinitely 
backwards in the range of past duration. There 
is a period in which these revolutions, whenever 
they had begun, would have brought the revolv- 
ing bodies into contact with the central mass ; 
and this period has in our system not yet elapsed. 
The watch is still going, and therefore it must 
have been wound up within a limited time. 

The solar system, at this its beginning, must 
have been arranged and put in motion by some 
cause. If we suppose this cause to operate by 
means of the configurations and the properties 
of previously existing matter, these configura- 
tions must have resulted from some still previ- 
ous cause, these properties must have produced 



RESISTING MEDIUM. 



207 



some previous effects. We are thus led to a 
condition still earlier than the assumed begin- 
ning ;— to an origin of the original state of the 
universe ; and in this manner we are carried 
perpetually further and further back, through a 
labyrinth of mechanical causation, without any 
possibility of finding anything in which the 
mind can acquiesce or rest, till we admit " a 
First Cause which is not mechanical." 

Thus the argument which was before urged 
against those in particular, who put forwards the 
Nebular Hypothesis in opposition to the admis- 
sion of an Intelligent Creator, offers itself again, 
as cogent in itself, when we adopt the opinion 
of a resisting medium, for which the physical 
proofs have been found to be so strong. The 
argument is indeed forced upon our minds, 
whatever view we take of the past history of the 
universe. Some have endeavoured to evade its 
force by maintaining that the world as it now 
exists has existed from eternity. They assert 
that the present order of things, or an order of 
things in some way resembling the present, pro- 
duced by the same causes, governed by the 
same laws, has prevailed through an infinite 
succession of past ages. We shall not dwell 
upon any objections to this tenet which might 
be drawn from our own conceptions, or from 
what may be called metaphysical sources. Nor 
shall we refer to the various considerations which 
history, geology, and astronomical records sup- 



208 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

ply, and which tend to show, not only that the 
past duration of the present course of things is 
finite, but that it is short, compared with such 
periods as we have had to speak of. But we 
may observe, that the doctrine of a resisting 
medium once established, makes this imagina- 
tion untenable ; compels us to go back to the 
origin, not only of the present course of the 
world, not only of the earth, but of the solar 
system itself ; and thus sets us forth upon that 
path of research into the series of past causation, 
where we obtain no answer of which the mean- 
ing corresponds to our questions, till we rest in 
the conclusion of a most provident and most 
powerful Creating Intelligence, 

It is related of Epicurus that when a boy, 
reading with his preceptor these verses of 
Hesiod, 

Hrot jxsv irpwri^a Xaog -/ever', avrap S7retra 
Tai evpvTspvog iravTOJV edog cKMpaXeg aiei 
AQavarujVt 

Eldest of beings, Chaos first arose, 

Thence Earth wide stretched, the steadfast seat of all 

The Immortals, 

the young scholar first betrayed his inquisitive 
genius by asking " And chaos whence ?" When 
ii$ his riper years he had persuaded himself 
that this question was sufficiently answered by 
saying that chaos arose from the concourse of 
atoms, it is strange that the same inquisitive 



RESISTING MEDIUM. 



209 



spirit did not again suggest the question " and 
atoms whence ?" And it is clear that however 
often the question " whence ?" had been answer- 
ed, it would still start up as at first. Nor could 
it suffice as an answer to say, that earth, chaos, 
atoms, were portions of a series of changes which 
went back to eternity. The preceptor of Epi- 
curus informed him, that to be satisfied on the 
subject of his enquiry, he must have recourse 
to the philosophers. If the young speculator 
had been told that chaos (if chaos indeed pre- 
ceded the present order) was produced by an 
Eternal Being, in whom resided purpose and 
will, he would have received a suggestion which, 
duly matured by subsequent contemplation, 
might have led him to a philosophy far more 
satisfactory than the material scheme can ever 
be, to one who looks, either abroad into the 
universe, or within into his own bosom. 



w. 



210 



Chapter IX. 
Mechanical Laws, 

N the preceding observations we have sup- 
posed the laws, by which different kinds 
of matter act and are acted upon, to be already 
in existence ; and have endeavoured to point 
out evidences of design and adaptation, dis- 
played in the selection and arrangement of these 
materials of the universe. These materials are, 
it has appeared, supplied in such measures and 
disposed in such forms, that by means of their 
properties and laws the business of the world 
goes on harmoniously and beneficially. But 
a further question occurs : how came matter to 
have such properties and laws ? Are these also 
to be considered as things of selection and insti- 
tution ? And if so, can we trace the reasons 
why the laws were established in their present 
form ; why the properties which matter actually 
possesses were established and bestowed upon 
it ? We have already attempted, in a previous 
part of this work, to point out some of the ad- 
vantages which are secured by the existing laws 
of heat, light and moisture : can we, in the same 
manner, point out the benefits which arise from 
the present constitution of those laws of matter 



MECHANICAL LAWS. 



211 



which are mainly concerned in the production 
of cosmical phenomena ? 

It will readily be perceived that the discussion 
of this point must necessarily require some effort 
of abstract thought. The laws and properties 
of which we have here to speak — the laws of 
motion and the universal properties of matter — 
are so closely interwoven with our conceptions 
of the external world, that we have great diffi- 
culty in conceiving them not to exist, or to exist 
other than they are. When w T e press or lift a 
stone, we can hardly imagine that it could, by 
possibility, do otherwise than resist our effort 
by its hardness and by its heaviness, qualities 
so familiar to us : when we throw it, it seems 
inevitable that its motion should depend on the 
impulse we give, just as we find that it inva- 
riably does. 

Nor is it easy to say hoiv far it is really pos- 
sible to suppose the fundamental attributes of 
matter to be different from what they are. If 
we, in our thoughts, attempt to divest matter of 
its powers of resisting and moving, it ceases to 
be matter, according to our conceptions, and we 
can no longer reason upon it with any distinct- 
ness. And yet is certain that we can conceive 
the laws of hardness and weight and motion to 
be quite different from what they are, and can 
point out some of the consequences which would 
result from such difference. The properties of 
matter, even the most fundamental and univer- 



212 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



sal ones, do not obtain by any absolute necessity, 
resembling that which belongs to the properties 
of geometry. A line touching a circle, is neces- 
sarily perpendicular to a line drawn to the centre 
through the point touched ; for it may be shown 
that the contrary involves a contradiction : but 
there is no contradiction in supposing that a 
body's motion should naturally diminish, or that 
its weight should increase in removing further 
from the earth's centre. 

Thus the properties of matter and the laws of 
motion are what we find them, not by virtue of 
any internal necessity which we can understand. 
The study of such laws and properties may 
therefore disclose to us the character of that 
external agency by which we conceive them to 
have been determined to be what they are ; and 
this must be the same agency by which all other 
parts of the constitution of the universe were 
appointed and ordered. 

But we can hardly expect, with regard to such 
subjects, that we shall be able to obtain any com- 
plete or adequate view of the reasons why these 
general laws are so selected, and so established. 
These laws are the universal basis of all opera- 
tions which go on, at any moment, in every part 
of space, with regard to every particle of matter, 
organic and inorganic. All other laws and pro- 
perties must have a reference to these, and must 
be influenced by them ; both such as men have 
already discovered, and the far greater number 



MECHANICAL LAWS. 



213 



which remain still unknown. The general 
economy and mutual relations of all parts of the 
universe must be subordinate to the laws of 
motion and matter of which we here speak. We 
can easily suppose that the various processes of 
nature, and the dependencies of various crea- 
tures, are affected in the most comprehensive 
manner by these laws ; — are simplified by their 
simplicity, made consistent by their univer- 
sality; rendered regular by their symmetry. 
We can easily suppose that in this way there 
may be the most profound and admirable reasons 
for the existence of the present universal pro- 
perties of matter, which we cannot apprehend in 
consequence of the limited nature of our know- 
ledge, and of our faculties. For, though our know- 
ledge on certain subjects, and to a certain extent 
is positive and clear, compared with the whole 
extent of the universe, the whole aggregate of 
things and relations and connexions which exist, 
it is most narrow and partial, most shallow 
and superficial. We cannot suppose, therefore, 
that the reasons which we discover for the pre- 
sent form of the laws of nature go nearly to the 
full extent, or to the bottom of the reasons, which 
a more complete and profound insight would 
enable us to perceive. To do justice to such rea- 
sons, would require nothing less than a perfect 
acquaintance with the whole constitution of every 
part of creation ; a knowledge which man has 
not, and, so far as we can conceive, never can 
have. 



214 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



We are certain, therefore, that our views, with 
regard to this part of our subject, must be imper- 
fect and limited. Yet still man has some know- 
ledge with regard to various portions of nature ; 
and with regard to those most general and com- 
paratively simple facts^ to which we now refer, 
his knowledge is more comprehensive, and goes 
deeper than it does in any other province. We 
conceive, therefore, that we shall not be engaged 
in any rash or presumptuous attempt, if we 
endeavour to point out some of the advantages 
which are secured by the present constitution of 
some of the general mechanical laws of nature ; 
and to suggest the persuasion of that purpose and 
wise design, which the selection of such laws 
will thus appear to imply. 



Chapter X, 
The Law of Gravitation. 

shall proceed to make a few observa- 
tions on the Law of Gravity, in virtue 
of which the motions of planets about the sun, 
and of satellites about their planets take place ; 
and by which also are produced the fall down- 
wards of all bodies within our reach, and the 
pressure which they exert upon their supports 
when at rest. The identification of the latter 




LAW OF GRAVITATION. 



215 



forces with the former, and the discovery of the 
single law by which these forces are every where 
regulated, was the great discovery of Newton : 
and we wish to make it appear that this law is 
established by an intelligent and comprehensive 
selection. 

The law of the sun's attraction upon the planets 
is, that this attraction varies inversely as the 
square of the distance ; that is, it decreases as 
that square increases, If we take three points 
or planets of the solar system, the distances of 
which from the sun are in the proportion, 1, 2, 
3 ; the attractive force which the sun at these 
distances exercises, is as 1, l-4th, and l-9th 
respectively. In the smaller variations of dis- 
tance which occur in the elliptical motion of 
one planet, the variations of the force follow the 
same law. Moreover, not only does the sun 
attract the planets, but they attract each other 
according to the same law ; the tendency to the 
earth which makes bodies heavy, is one of the 
effects of this law : and all these effects of the 
attractions of large masses may be traced to the 
attractions of the particles of which they are 
composed ; so that the final generalization, in- 
cluding all the derivative laws, is, that every 
particle of matter in the universe attracts every 
other, according to the law of the inverse square 
of the distance. 

Such is the law of universal gravitation. 
Now, the question is, why do either the attrac- 



216 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

tions of masses, or those of their component 
particles, follow this law of the inverse square 
of the distance rather than any other ? When 
the distance becomes 1, 2, and 3, why should 
not the force also become 1, 2, and 3 ?— or if it 
must be weaker at points more remote from the 
attracting body, why should it not be 1, a half, 
a third ? or 1, l-8th, 1-27 th ? Such laws could 
easily be expressed mathematically, and their 
consequences calculated. Can any reason be 
assigned why the law which we find in operation 
must obtain ? Can any be assigned why it 
should obtain ? 

The answer to this is, that no reason, at all 
satisfactory, can be given why such a law must, 
of necessity, be what it is ; but that very strong 
reasons can be pointed out why, for the beauty 
and advantage of the system, the present one is 
better than others. We will point out some of 
these reasons. 

l. In the first place, the system could not 
have subsisted, if the force had followed a direct 
instead of an inverse law, with respect to the 
distance ; that is, if it had increased when the 
distance increased. It has been sometimes 
said, that " all direct laws of force are excluded 
on account of the danger from perturbing 
forces ; * that if the planets had pulled at this 
earth, the harder the further off they were, they 



* Paley. 



LAW OF GRAVITATION. 



217 



would have dragged it entirely out of its course. 
This is not an exact statement of what would 
happen : if the force were to be simply in the 
direct ratio of the distance, any number of 
planets might revolve in the most regular and 
orderly manner. Their mutual effects, which 
we may call perturbations if we please, would 
be considerable ; but these perturbations would 
be so combined with the unperturbed motion, 
as to produce a new motion not less regular 
than the other. This curious result would fol- 
low, that every body in the system would de- 
scribe, or seem to describe, about every other, 
an exact elliptical orbit ; and that the times of 
the revolution of every body in its orbit would 
be all equal. This is proved by Newton, in the 
64th proposition of the Principia. There would 
be nothing to prevent all the planets, on this 
supposition, from moving round the sun in orbits 
exactly circular, or nearly circular, according 
to the mode iii which they were set in motion. 

But though the perturbations of the system 
would not make this law inadmissible, there are 
other circumstances which w r ould do so. Under 
this law, the gravity of bodies at the earth's 
surface would cease to exist. Nothing would 
fall or weigh downwards. The greater action 
of the distant sun and planets would exactly 
neutralize the gravity of the earth : a ball 
thrown from the hand, however gently, w r ould 
immediately become a satellite of the earth, and 



218 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

would for the future accompany it in its course, 
revolving about it in the space of one year. All 
terrestrial things would float about with no 
principle of coherence or stability : they would 
obey the general law of the system, but would 
acknowledge no particular relation to the earth. 
We can hardly pretend to judge of the abstract 
possibility of such a system of things ; but it is 
clear that it could not exist without an utter 
subversion of all that we can conceive of the 
economy and structure of the world which we 
inhabit. 

With any other direct law of force, we should 
in like manner lose gravity, without gaining the 
theoretical regularity of the planetary motions 
which we have described in the case just con- 
sidered. 

2. Among inverse laws of the distance, (that 
is those according to which the force diminishes 
as the distance from the origin of force in- 
creases,) all which diminish the central force 
faster than the cube of the distance increases are 
inadmissible, because they are incompatible with 
the permanent revolution of a planet. Under 
such laws it would follow, that a planet would 
describe a spiral, line about the sun, and would 
either approach nearer and nearer to him per- 
petually, or perpetually go further and further 
off : nearly as a stone at the end of a string, 
when the string is whirled round, and is allowed 
to wrap round the hand, or to unwrap from it, 
approaches to or recedes from the hand. 



LAW OF GRAVITATION. 



219 



If we endeavour to compare the law of the 
inverse square of the distance, which really 
regulates the central force, with other laws, not 
obviously inadmissible, as for instance, the in- 
verse simple ratio of the distance, a considerable 
quantity of calculation is found to be necessary 
in order to trace the results, and especially the 
perturbations in the two cases. The perturba- 
tions, in the supposed case, have not been cal- 
culated ; such a calculation being a process so 
long and laborious that it is never gone through, 
except for the purpose of comparing the results 
of theory with those of observation, as we can do 
with regard to the law of the inverse square. 
We can only say, therefore, that the stability of 
the system, and the moderate limits of the per- 
turbations, which we know to be secured by the 
existing law, would not, so far as we know, be 
obtained by any different law. 

Without going into further examination of the 
subject, we may observe that there are some 
circumstances in which the present system has 
a manifest superiority in simplicity over the 
condition which would have belonged to it if 
the force had followed any other law. Thus, 
with the present law of gravitation, the planets 
revolve, returning perpetually on the same track, 
very nearly. The earth describes an oval, in 
consequence of which motion she is nearer to 
the sun in our winter than in our summer by 
about one-thirtieth part of the whole distance. 
And, as the matter now is, the nearest approach 



220 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



to the sun, and the farthest recess from him, 
occur always at the same points of the orbit. 
There is indeed a slight alteration in these 
points, arising from disturbing forces, but this 
is hardly sensible in the course of several ages. 
Now if the force had followed any other law, we 
should have had the earth running perpetually 
on a new track. The greatest and least dis- 
tances would have occurred at different parts in 
every successive revolution. The orbit would 
have perpetually intersected and been inter- 
laced with the path described in former revolu- 
tions ; and the simplicity and regularity which 
characterises the present motion would have 
been quite wanting. 

3. Another peculiar point of simplicity in the 
present law of mutual attraction is this : that it 
makes the law of attraction for spherical masses 
the same as for single particles. If particles 
attract with forces which are inversely as the 
square of the distance, spheres composed of such 
particles will exert a force which follows the 
same law. In this character the present law is 
singular, among all possible laws, excepting 
that of the direct distance which we have already 
discussed. If the law of the gravitation of par- 
ticles had been that of the inverse simple dis- 
tance, the attraction of a sphere would have been 
expressed by a complex series of mathematical 
expressions, each representing a simple law. It 
is truly remarkable that the law of the inverse 



LAW OF GRAVITATION. 



221 



square of the distance, which appears to be 
selected as that of the masses of the system, and 
of which the mechanism is, that it arises from 
the action of the particles of the system, should 
lead us to the same law for the action of these 
particles : there is a striking prerogative of sim- 
plicity in the law thus adopted. 

The law of gravitation actually prevailing in 
the solar system has thus great and clear advan- 
tages over any law widely different from it ; 
and has moreover, in many of its consequences, 
a simplicity which belongs to this precise law 
alone. It is in many such respects a unique 
law : and when we consider that it possesses 
several properties which are peculiar to it, and 
several advantages which, so far as we can see, 
may be peculiar to it, and which are certainly 
nearly so ; we have some ground, it would ap- 
pear, to look upon its peculiarities and its advan- 
tages as connected. For the reasons mentioned 
in the last chapter, we can hardly expect to dis- 
cern fully the way in which the system is bene- 
fited by the simplicity of this law, and by the 
mathematical elegance of its consequences : but 
when we see that it has some such beauties, and 
some manifest benefits, we may easily suppose 
that our ignorance and limited capacity alone 
prevent our perceiving that there are, for the 
selection of this law of force, reasons of a far 
more refined and comprehensive kind than 
those which we can distinctly apprehend. 



222 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



4. But before quitting this subject we may 
offer a few farther observations on the question, 
whether gravitation and the law of gravitation be 
necessary attributes of matter. We have spoken 
of the selection of this law ; but is it selected? 
Could it have been otherwise ? Is not the force 
of attraction a necessary consequence of the 
fundamental properties of matter ? 

This is a question which has been much agi- 
tated among the followers of Newton. Some 
have maintained, as Cotes, that gravity is an 
inherent property of all matter ; others, with 
Newton himself, have considered it as an ap- 
pendage to the essential qualities of matter, and 
have proposed hypotheses to account for the 
mode in which its effects are produced. 

The result of all that can be said on the sub- 
ject appears to be this : that no one can demon- 
strate the possibility of deducing gravity from 
the acknowledged fundamental properties of 
matter : and that no philosopher asserts, that 
matter has been found to exist, which was des- 
titute of gravity. It is a property which we 
have no right to call necessary to matter, but 
every reason to suppose universal. 

If we could show gravity to be a necessary 
consequence of those properties which we adopt 
as essential to our notion of matter, (extension, 
solidity, mobility, inertia) we might then call it 
also one of the essential properties. But no one 
probably will assert that this is the case. Its 



LAW OF GRAVITATION. 



223 



universality is a fact of observation merely. 
How then came a property, — in its existence so 
needful for the support of the universe, in its 
laws so well adapted to the purposes of creation, 
— how came it to be thus universal ? Its being 
found everywhere is necessary for its uses ; but 
this is so far from being a sufficient explanation 
of its existence, that it is an additional fact to be 
explained. We have here, then, an agency, 
most simple in its rule, most comprehensive in 
its influence, most effectual and admirable in its 
operation. What evidence could be afforded of 
design, by laws of mechanical action, which this 
law thus existing and thus operating does not 
afford us ? 

5. It is not necessary for our purpose to con- 
sider the theories which have been proposed to 
account for the action of gravity. They have 
proceeded on the plan of reducing this action to 
the result of pressure or impulse. Even if such 
theories could be established, they could not 
much, or at all, affect our argument ; for the 
arrangements by which pressure or impact could 
produce the effects which gravity produces, must 
be at least as clearly results of contrivance, as 
gravity itself can be. 

In fact, however, none of these attempts can 
be considered as at all successful. That of New- 
ton is very remarkable : it is found among the 
Queries in the second edition of his Optics. " To 
show," he says, " that I do not take gravity for 



224 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



an essential property of bodies, I have added one 
question concerning its cause, choosing to pro- 
pose it by way of question, because I am not yet 
satisfied about it for want of experiments." The 
hypothesis which he thus suggests is, that there 
is an elastic medium pervading all space, and 
increasing in elasticity as we proceed from dense 
bodies outwards : that this " causes the gravity 
of such dense bodies to each other : every body 
endeavouring to go from the denser parts of the 
medium towards the rarer." Of this hypothesis 
we may venture to say, that it is in the first 
place quite gratuitous ; we cannot trace in any 
other phenomena a medium possessing these 
properties : and in the next place, that the hy- 
pothesis contains several suppositions which are 
more complex than the fact to be explained, and 
none which are less so. Can we, on Newton's 
principles, conceive an elastic medium otherwise 
than as a collection of particles, repelling each 
other ? and is the repulsion of such particles a 
simpler fact than the attraction of those which 
gravitate ? And when we suppose that the me- 
dium becomes more elastic as we proceed from 
each attracting body, what cause can we con- 
ceive capable of keeping it in such a condition, 
except a repulsive force emanating from the body 
itself : a supposition at least as much requiring 
to be accounted for, as the attraction of the body. 
It does not appear, then, that this hypothesis 
will bear examination \ although, for our purpose, 



LAW OF GRAVITATION. 



225 



the argument would be rather strengthened than 
weakened, if it could be established. 

6. Another theory of the cause of gravity, 
which at one time excited considerable notice, 
was that originally proposed by M. Le Sage, in 
a memoir entitled, " Lucrece Newtonien," and. 
further illustrated by M. Prevost; according to 
which all space is occupied by currents of matter, 
moving perpetually in straight lines, in all direc- 
tions, with a vast velocity, and penetrating all 
bodies. When two bodies are near each other, 
they intercept the current which would flow in 
the intermediate space if they were not there, 
and thus receive a tendency towards each other 
from the pressure of the currents on their farther 
sides. Without examining further this curious 
and ingenious hypothesis, we may make upon it 
the same kind of observations as before ; — that 
it is perfectly gratuitous, except as a means of 
explaining the phenomena ; and that, if it were 
proved, it would still remain to be shown what 
necessity has caused the existence of these two 
kinds of matter ; the first kind being that which 
is commonly called matter, and which alone 
affects our senses, while it is inert as to any 
tendency to motion ; the second kind being 
something imperceptible to our senses, except 
by the effects it produces on matter of the former 
kind ; yet exerting an impulse on every material 
body, permeating every portion of common 
matter, flowing with inconceivable velocity, in 

W. Q 



226 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

inexhaustible abundance, from every part of the 
abyss of infinity on one side, to the opposite 
part of the same abyss ; and so constituted that 
through all eternity it can never bend its path, 
or return, or tarry in its course. 

If we were to accept this theory, it would 
little or nothing diminish our wonder at the 
structure of the universe. We might well con- 
tinue to admire the evidence of contrivance, if 
such a machinery should be found to produce 
all the effects which flow from the law of srravi- 
tation. 

7. The law of the force of gravity, which we 
have explained in the beginning of this chapter, 
namely, that the attraction between all bodies 
varies inversely as the square of their distance 
from each other, has often been a subject of dis- 
cussion, with reference to the reasons why it is 
so rather than otherwise. The arguments for 
and against the assertion that this is the neces- 
sary and inevitable law of such a force, were 
canvassed with great animation about the middle 
of the last century. 

Newton and other astronomers had found that 
the line of the moon's apsides (that is of her 
greatest and least distances from the earth) moves 
round to different parts of the heavens with a 
velocity twice as great as that which the calcu- 
lation from the law of gravitation seems at first 
sight to give. According to the theory, it ap- 
peared that this line ought to move round once 



LAW OF GRAVITATION. 



227 



in eighteen years ; according to observation, it 
moves round once in nine years. This dif- 
ference, the only obvious failure of the theory 
of gravitation, embarrassed mathematicians ex- 
ceedingly. It is true, it was subsequently dis- 
covered that the apparent discrepancy arose from 
a mistake ; the calculation, which is long and 
laborious, was supposed to have been carried 
far enough to get close to the truth ; but it ap- 
peared afterwards that the residue which had 
been left out as insignificant, produced, by an 
unexpected turn in the reckoning, an effect as 
large as that which had been taken for the whole. 
But this discovery was not made till a later 
period ; and in the mean time the law of the in- 
verse square appeared to be at fault. Clairault 
tried to remedy the defect by supposing that the 
force of the earth's gravity consisted of a large 
force varying inversely as the square of the dis- 
tance, and a very small force varying inversely 
as the fourth power (the square of the square). 
By such a supposition, observation and theory 
could be reconciled ; but on the suggestion of 
it, BufTon came forward with the assertion that 
the force could not vary according to any other 
law than the inverse square. His arguments 
are rather metaphysical than physical or mathe- 
matical. Gravity, he urges, is a quality, an 
emanation ; and all emanations are inversely as 
the square of the distance, as light, odours. To 
this Clairault replies by asking how we know 



228 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



that light and odours have their intensity in- 
versely as the square of the distance from their 
origin : not, he observes, by measuring the in- 
tensity, but by supposing these effects to be ma- 
terial emanations. But who, he asks, supposes 
gravity to be a material emanation from the 
attracting body. 

Buffon again pleads that so many facts prove 
the law of the inverse square, that a single one, 
which occurs to interfere with this agreement, 
must be in some manner capable of being ex- 
plained away. Clairault replies, that the facts 
do not prove this law to obtain exactly ; that 
small effects, of the same order as the one under 
discussion, have been neglected in the supposed 
proof ; and that therefore the law is only known 
to be true, as far as such an approximation goes, 
and no farther. 

Buffon then argues, that there can be no such 
additional fraction of the force, following a dif- 
ferent law, as Clairault supposes : for what, he 
asks, is there to determine the magnitude of the 
fraction to one amount rather than another? 
why should nature select for it any particular 
magnitude ? To this it is replied, that, whether 
we can explain the fact or not, nature does 
select certain magnitudes in preference to others : 
that where we ascertain she does this, we are not 
to deny the fact because we cannot assign the 
grounds of her preference. What is there, it is 
asked, to determine the magnitude of the whole 



LAW OF GRAVITATION. 



229 



force at any fixed distance ? We cannot tell ; 
yet the force is of a certain definite intensity 
and no other. 

Finally Clairault observes, that we have, in 
cohesion, capillary attraction, and various other 
cases, examples of forces varying according to 
other laws than the inverse square ; and that 
therefore this cannot be the only possible law. 

The discrepancy between observation and 
theory which gave rise to this controversy was 
removed, as has been already stated, by a more 
exact calculation : and thus, as Laplace observes, 
in this case the metaphysician turned out to be 
right and the mathematician to be wrong. But 
most persons, probably, who are familiar with 
such trains of speculation, will allow, that Clair- 
ault had the best of the argument, and that the 
attempts to show the law of gravitation to be ne- 
cessarily what it is, are fallacious and unsound. 

8. We may observe, however, that the law of 
gravitation according to the inverse square of the 
distance, which thus regulates the motions of the 
solar system, is not confined to that province of 
the universe, as has been shown by recent re- 
searches. It appears by the observations and 
calculations of Sir John Herschel, that several 
of the stars, called double stars, consist of a pair 
of luminous bodies which revolve about each 
other in ellipses, in such a manner as to show 
that the force, by which they are attracted to 
each other, varies according to the law of the 



230 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



inverse square. We thus learn a remarkable 
fact concerning bodies which seemed so far re- 
moved from us that no effort of our science could 
reach them ; and we find that the same law of 
mutual attraction which we have before traced 
to the farthest bounds of the solar system, prevails 
also in spaces at a distance compared with which 
the orbit of Saturn shrinks into a point. The 
establishment of such a truth certainly suggests, 
as highly probably, the prevalence of this law 
among all the bodies of the universe. And we 
may therefore suppose, that the same ordinance 
which gave to the parts of our system that rule 
by which they fulfil the purposes of their creation, 
impressed the same rule on the other portions of 
matter which are scattered in the most remote 
parts of the universe ; and thus gave to their 
movements the same grounds of simplicity and 
harmony which we find reason to admire, as far 
as we can acquire any knowledge of our own 
more immediate neighbourhood. 



231 



Chapter XI. 
The Laws of Motion. 

§|||3|E shall now make a few remarks on the 
plPlt general Laws of Motion by which all 
mechanical effects take place. Are we to con- 
sider these as instituted laws ? And if so, can 
we point out any of the reasons which we may 
suppose to have led to the selection of those 
laws which really exist ? 

The observations formerly made concerning 
the inevitable narrowness and imperfection of 
our conclusions on such subjects, apply here, 
even more strongly than in the case of the law 
of gravitation. We can hardly conceive matter 
divested of these laws ; and we cannot perceive 
or trace a millionth part of the effects which they 
produce. We cannot, therefore, expect to go 
far in pointing out the essential advantages of 
these laws such as they now obtain. 

It would be easy to show that the fundamental 
laws of motion, in whatever form we state them, 
possess a very preeminent simplicity, compared 
with almost all others, which we might imagine 
as existing. This simplicity has indeed pro- 
duced an effect on men's minds which, though 
delusive, appears to be very natural ; several 
writers have treated these laws as self-evident, 



232 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



and necessarily flowing from the nature of our 
conceptions. We conceive that this is an er- 
roneous view, and that these laws are known to 
us to be what they are, by experience only; 
that the laws of motion might, so far as we can 
discern, have been any others. They appear 
therefore to be selected for their fitness to answer 
their purposes ; and we may, perhaps, be able 
to point out some instances in which this fitness 
is apparent to us. 

Newton, and many English philosophers, 
teach the existence of three separate fundamental 
laws of motion, while most of the eminent ma- 
thematicians of France reduce these to two, the 
law of inertia and the law that force is propor- 
tional to velocity. As an example of the views 
which we wish to illustrate, we may take the 
law of inertia, which is identical with Newton's 
first Law of Motion. This law asserts, that a 
body at rest continues at rest, and that a body 
in motion goes on moving with its velocity and 
direction unchanged, except so far as it is acted 
on by extraneous forces.* 

* If the laws of Motion are stated as three, which we 
conceive to be the true view of the subject, the other two, as 
applied in mechanical reasonings, are the following : 

Second Law. When a force acts on a body in motion, it 
produces the same effect as if the same force acted on a body 
at rest. 

Third Law. When a force of the nature of pressure pro- 
duces motion, the velocity produced is proportional to the 
force, other things being equal. 



THE LAWS OF MOTION. 



233 



We conceive that this law, simple and uni- 
versal as it is, cannot be shown to be necessarily 
true. It might be difficult to discuss this point 
in general terms with any clearness ; but let us 
take the only example which we know of a 
motion absolutely uniform, in consequence of 
the absence of any force to accelerate or retard 
it ; — this motion is the rotation of the earth on 
its axis. 

1. It is scarcely possible that discussions on 
such subjects should not have a repulsive and 
scholastic aspect, and appear like disputes about 
words rather than things. For mechanical wri- 
ters have exercised all their ingenuity so to cir- 
cumscribe their notions and so to define their 
terms, that these fundamental truths should be 
expressed in the simplest manner : the conse- 
quence of which has been, that they have been 
made to assume the appearance rather of iden- 
tical assertions than of general facts of expe- 
rience. But in order to avoid this inconve- 
nience, as far as may be, we take the first law 
of motion as exemplified in a particular case, 
the rotation of the earth. Of all the motions 
with which we are acquainted, this alone is 
invariable. Each day, measured by the passages 
of the stars, is so precisely of the same length, 
that, according to Laplace's calculations, it is 
impossible that a difference of one hundredth of 
a second of time should have obtained between 
the length of the day in the earliest ages and at 



234 



COSMIC AL ARRANGEMENTS. 



the present time. Now why is this? How is 
this very remarkable uniformity preserved in 
this particular phenomenon, while all the other 
motions of the system are subject to inequali- 
ties ? How is it that in the celestial machine 
no retardation takes place by the lapse of time, 
as would be the case in any machine which it 
would be possible for human powers to con- 
struct ? The answer is, that in the earth's revo- 
lution on her axis no cause operates to retard 
the speed, like the imperfection of materials, the 
friction of supports, the resistance of the am- 
bient medium ; * impediments which cannot, in 
any human mechanism, however perfect, be 
completely annihilated. But here we are led 
to ask again, why should the speed continue 
the same when not affected by an extraneous 
cause ? why should it not languish and decay 
of itself by the mere lapse of time ? That it 
might do so, involves no contradiction, for it 
was the common, though erroneous, belief of all 
mechanical speculators, to the time of Galileo. 
We can conceive velocity to diminish in pro- 
ceeding from a certain point of time, as easily 

* It has already been stated that the resisting medium 
spoken of in Chapter VIII. of this Book has not yet pro- 
duced any effect which can be detected in the motion of the 
earth. Probably the effect of this medium upon the rotation 
of the earth would be extremely small compared with its 
effect on the earth's motion in her orbit ; and yet this latter 
effect bears no discoverable proportion to the effect of the 
smallest perturbing forces of the other planets. 



THE LAWS OF MOTION. 



235 



as we can conceive force to diminish in proceed- 
ing from a certain point of space, which in 
attractive forces really occurs. But, it is some- 
times said, the motion (that is the velocity) must 
continue the same from one instant to another, 
for there is nothing to change it. This appears 
to be taking refuge in words. We may call 
the velocity, that is the speed of a body, its mo- 
tion ; but we cannot, by giving it this name, 
make it a thing which has any a priori claim to 
permanence, much less any self-evident con- 
stancy. Why must the speed of a body, left to 
itself, continue the same, any more than its 
temperature. Hot bodies grow cooler when 
left to themselves, why should not quick bodies 
go slower when left to themselves ? Why must 
a body describe 1000 feet in the next second 
because it has described 1000 feet in the last? 
Nothing but experience, under proper circum- 
stances, can inform us whether bodies, abstract- 
ing from external agency, do move according 
to such a rule. We find that they do so : we 
learn that all diminution of their speed which 
ever takes place, can be traced to external 
causes. Contrary to all that men had guessed, 
motion appears to be of itself endless and un- 
wearied. In order to account for the unalter- 
able permanence of the length of our day, all 
that is requisite is to show that there is no let or 
hindrance in the way of the earth's rotation ; — 
no resisting medium or alteration of size — she 



236 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



" spinning sleeps" on her axle, as the poet ex- 
presses it, and may go on sleeping with the 
same regularity for ever, so far as the experi- 
mental properties of motion are concerned. 

Such is the necessary consequence of the first 
law of motion ; but the law itself has no neces- 
sary existence, so far as we can see. It was 
discovered only after various perplexities and 
false conjectures of speculators on mechanics. 
We have learnt that it is so, but we have not 
learnt, nor can any one undertake to teach us, 
that it must have been so. For aught we can 
tell, it is one among a thousand equally possible 
laws, which might have regulated the motions 
of bodies. 

2. But though we have thus no reason to con- 
sider this as the only possible law, we have good 
reason to consider it as the best, or at least as 
possessing all that we can conceive of advan- 
tage. It is the simplest conceivable of such 
laws. If the velocity had been compelled to 
change with the time, there must have been a 
law of the change, and the kind and amount of 
this change must have been determined by its 
dependence on the time and other conditions. 
This, though quite supposable, would undoubt- 
edly have been more complex than the present 
state of things. And though complexity does 
not appear to embarrass the operation of the 
laws of nature, and is admitted, without scruple, 
when there is reason for it, simplicity is the 
usual character of such laws, and appears to 



THE LAWS OF MOTION. 



237 



have been a ground of selection in the formation 
of the universe, as it is a mark of beauty to us 
in our contemplation of it. 

But there is a still stronger apparent reason 
for the selection of this law of the preservation 
of motion. If the case had been otherwise, the 
universe must necessarily in the course of ages 
have been reduced to a state of rest, or at least 
to a state not sensibly differing from it. If the 
earth's motion, round its axis, had slackened by 
a very small quantity, for instance, by a hun- 
dredth of a second in a revolution, and in this 
proportion continued, the day would have been 
already lengthened by six hours in the 6000 
years which have elapsed since the history of the 
world began ; and if we suppose a longer period 
to precede or to follow, the day might be in- 
creased to a month or to any length. All the 
adaptations which depend on the length of the 
day would consequently be deranged. But 
this would not be all ; for the same law of mo- 
tion is equally requisite for the preservation of 
the annual motion of the earth. If her motion 
were retarded by the establishment of any other 
law instead of the existing one, she would wheel 
nearer and nearer to the sun at every revolution, 
and at last reach the centre, like a falling hoop. 
The same would happen to the other planets ; 
and the whole solar system would, in the course 
of a certain period, be gathered into a heap of 
matter without life or motion. In the present 
state of things on the other hand, the system, as 



238 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



we have already explained, is, by a combination 
of remarkable provisions, calculated for an 
almost indefinite existence, of undiminished 
fitness for its purposes. 

There are, therefore, manifest reasons, why, of 
all laws which could occupy the place of the first 
law of motion, the one which now obtains is the 
only one consistent with the durability and uni- 
formity of the system the one, therefore, which 
we may naturally conceive to be selected by a 
wise contriver. And as, along with this, it has 
appeared that we have no sort of right to attribute 
the establishment of this law to anything but se- 
lection, we have here a striking evidence of de- 
sign, suited to lead us to a perception of that 
Divine mind, by which means so simple are made 
to answer purposes so extensive and so beneficial. 



Chapter XII. 
Friction .* 

E shall not pursue this argument of the 
last chapter, by considering the other 
laws of motion in the same manner as we have 
there considered the first, which might be done. 

* Though Friction is not obviously concerned in any cos- 
mical phenomena, we have thought this the proper place to 
introduce the consideration of it ; since the contrast between 
the cases in which it does act, and those in which it does 
not, is best illustrated by a comparison of cosmical with ter- 
restrial motions. 




FRICTION. 



239 



But the facts which form exceptions and appa- 
rent contradictions to the first law of which we 
have been treating, and which are very numer- 
ous, offer, we conceive, an additional exemplifi- 
cation of the same argument ; and this we shall 
endeavour to illustrate. 

The rule that a body naturally moves for ever 
with an undiminished speed, is so far from being 
obviously true, that it appears on a first exami- 
nation to be manifestly false. The hoop of the 
school-boy, left to itself, runs on a short distance, 
and then stops ; his top spins a little while, but 
finally flags and falls ; all motion on the earth 
appears to decay by its own nature ; all matter 
which we move appears to have a perpetual 
tendency to divest itself of the velocity which we 
communicate to it. How is this reconcileable 
with the first law of motion on which we have 
been insisting? 

It is reconciled principally by considering the 
effect of Friction, Among terrestrial objects 
friction exerts an agency almost as universal and 
constant as the laws of motion themselves ; an 
agency which completely changes and disguises 
the results of those laws. We shall consider 
some of these effects. 

It is probably not necessary to explain at any 
length the nature and operation of friction. 
When a body cannot move without causing two 
surfaces to rub together, this rubbing has a ten- 
dency to diminish the body's motion or to pre- 
vent it entirely. If the body of a carriage be 



240 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

placed on the earth without the wheels, a consi- 
derable force will be requisite in order to move 
it at all : it is here the friction against the ground 
which obstructs the motion. If the carriage be 
placed on its wheels, a much less force will move 
it, but if moved it will soon stop : it is the fric- 
tion at the ground and at the axles which stops 
it : placed on a level rail road, with well made 
and well oiled wheels, and once put in motion, 
it might run a considerable distance alone, for 
the friction is here much less ; but there is 
friction, and therefore the motion would after a 
time cease. 

The same kind of action between the surfaces 
of two bodies which retards and stops their mo- 
tions when they move touching each other, will 
also prevent their moving at all, if the force 
which urges them into motion be insufficient 
to overcome the resistance which the contact 
of the surfaces produces* Friction, as writers 
on mechanics use the term, exists not only when 
the surfaces rub against each other, but also 
when the state of things is such that they would 
rub if they did move. It is a force which is 
called into action by a tendency to move, and 
which forbids motion ; it may be likened to a 
chain of a certain force which binds bodies in 
their places ; and we may push or pull the 
bodies without moving them, except we exert a 
sufficient force to break this imaginary chain. 

1. The friction which we shall principally 



FRICTION. 



241 



consider is the friction which prevents motion. 
So employed, friction is one of the most univer- 
sal and important agents in the mechanism of 
our daily comforts and occupations. It is a 
force which is called into play to an extent in- 
comparably greater than all the other forces with 
which we are concerned in the course of our 
daily life. We are dependent upon it at every 
instant and in every action : and it is not pos- 
sible to enumerate all the ways in which it serves 
us ; scarcely even to suggest a sufficient number 
of them to give us a true notion of its functions. 

What can appear more simple operations 
than standing and walking ? yet it is easy to 
see that without the aid of friction these simple 
actions would scarcely be possible. Every one 
knows how difficult and dangerous they are 
when performed on smooth ice. In such a 
situation we cannot always succeed in standing : 
if the ice be very smooth, it is by no means 
easy to walk, even when the surface is perfectly 
level ; and if it were ever so little inclined, no 
one would make the attempt. Yet walking on 
the ice and on the ground differ only in our ex- 
periencing more friction in the latter case. We 
say more, for there is a considerable friction even 
in the case of ice, as we see by the small distance 
which a stone slides when thrown along the sur- 
face. It is this friction of the earth which, at 
every step we take, prevents the foot from sliding 
back ; and thus allows us to push the body and 

W. R 



242 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

the other foot forwards. And when we come 
to violent bodily motions, to running, leaping, 
pulling or pushing objects, it is easily seen bow 
entirely we depend upon the friction of the 
ground for our strength and force. Every one 
knows how completely powerless we become in 
any of these actions by the foot slipping. 

In the same manner it is the friction of objects 
to which the hand is applied, which enables us 
to hold them with any degree of firmness. In 
some contests it was formerly the custom for the 
combatants to rub their bodies with oil, that the 
adversary might not be able to keep his grasp. 
If the pole of the boatman, the rope of the sailor, 
were thus smooth and lubricated, how weak 
would be the thrust and the pull ! Yet this 
would only be the removal of friction. 

Our buildings are no less dependent on this 
force for their stability. Some edifices are 
erected without the aid of cement : and if the 
stones be large and well squared, such structures 
may be highly substantial and durable ; even 
when rude and slight, houses so built answer 
the purposes of life. These are entirely upheld 
by friction, and without the support of that agent 
they would be thrown down by the Zephyr, far 
more easily than if all the stones were lumps of 
ice with a thawing surface. But even in cases 
where cement binds the masonry, it does not 
take the duty of holding it together. In conse- 
quence of the existence of friction, there is no 
constant tendency of the stones to separate ; 



FRICTION. 



243 



they are in a state of repose. If this were not 
so, if every shock and every breeze required to 
be counteracted by the cement, no composition 
exists which would long sustain such a wear and 
tear. The cement excludes the corroding ele- 
ments, and helps to resist extraordinary violence ; 
but it is friction which gives the habitual state 
of rest. 

We are not to consider friction as a small 
force, slightly modifying the effects of other 
agencies. On the contrary its amount is in most 
cases very great. When a body lies loose on 
the ground, the friction is equal to one third or 
one half, or in some cases the whole of its weight. 
But in cases of bodies supported by oblique pres- 
sure, the amount is far more enormous. In the 
arch of a bridge, the friction which is called 
into play between two of the vaulting stones, 
may be equal to the whole weight of the bridge. 
In such cases this conservative force is so great, 
that the common theory, which neglects it, does 
not help us even to guess what will take place. 
According to the theory, certain forms of arches 
only will stand ; but in practice almost any 
form will stand, and it is not easy to construct 
a model of a bridge which will fall. 

We may see the great force of friction in the 
brake , by which a large weight running down 
a long inclined plane has its motion moderated 
and stopt ; in the windlass, where a few coils of 
the rope round a cylinder sustain the stress and 
weight of a large iron anchor ; in the nail or 



244 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



screw which holds together large beams ; in the 
mode of raising large blocks of granite by an 
iron rod driven into a hole in the stone. Pro- 
bably no greater forces are exercised in any 
processes in the arts than the force of friction ; 
and it is always employed to produce rest, sta- 
bility, moderate motion. Being always ready 
and never wearied, always at hand and augment- 
ing with the exigency, it regulates, controls, 
subdues all motions ; — counteracts all other 
agents ; — and finally gains the mastery over all 
other terrestrial agencies, however violent, fre- 
quent, or long continued. The perpetual action 
of all other terrestrial forces appears, on a large 
scale, only as so many interruptions of the con- 
stant and stationary rule of friction. 

The objects which every where surround us, 
the books or dishes which stand on our tables, 
our tables and chairs themselves, the loose clods 
and stones in the field, the heaviest masses pro- 
duced by nature or art, would be in a perpetual 
motion,, quick or slow according to the forces 
which acted on them, and to their size, if it were 
not for the tranquillizing and steadying effects 
of the agent we are considering. Without this, 
our apartments, if they kept their shape, would 
exhibit to us articles of furniture, and of all 
other kinds, sliding and creeping from side to 
side at every push and every wind, like loose 
objects in a ship's cabin, when she is changing 
her course in a gale. 

Here, then, we have a force, most extensive 



FRICTION. 



245 



and incessant in its operation, which is abso- 
lutely essential to the business of this terrestrial 
world, according to any notion which we can 
form. The more any one considers its effects, 
the more he will find how universally depen- 
dent he is upon it, in every action of his life ; 
resting or moving, dealing with objects of art 
or of nature, with instruments of enjoyment or 
of action. 

2. Now we have to observe concerning this 
agent, Friction, that we have no ground for 
asserting it to be a necessary result of other pro- 
perties of matter, for instance, of their solidity 
and coherency. Philosophers have not been 
able to deduce the laws of friction from the 
other known properties of matter, nor even to 
explain what we know experimentally of such 
laws, (which is not much,) without introduc- 
ing new hypotheses concerning the surfaces of 
bodies, &c. — hypotheses which are not supplied 
us by any other set of phenomena. So far as 
our knowledge goes, friction is a separate pro- 
perty, and may be conceived to have been 
bestowed upon matter for particular purposes. 
How well it answers the purpose of fitting 
matter for the uses of the daily life of man, we 
have already seen. 

We may make suppositions as to the mode in 
which friction is connected with the texture of 
bodies ; but little can be gained for philosophy, 
or for speculation of any kind, by such conjec- 
tures respecting unknown connexions. If, on 



246 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

the other hand, we consider this property of 
friction, and find that it prevails there, and there 
only, where the general functions, analogies, 
and relations of the universe require it, we shall 
probably receive a strong impression that it was 
introduced into the system of the world for a 
purpose, 

3. It is very remarkable that this force, which 
is thus so efficacious and discharges such impor- 
tant offices in all earthly mechanism, disappears 
altogether when we turn to the mechanism of 
the heavens. All motions on the earth soon 
stop ; — a machine which imitates the movements 
of the stars cannot go long without winding up : 
but the stars themselves have gone on in their 
courses for ages, with no diminution of their 
motions, and offer no obvious prospect of any 
change. This is so palpable a fact, that the first 
attempts of men to systematize their mechanical 
notions were founded upon it. The ancients 
held that motions were to be distinguished into 
natural motions and violent, — the former go on 
without diminution — the latter are soon extin- 
guished ; — the motions of the stars are of the 
former kind -those of a stone thrown, and in 
short all terrestrial motions, of the latter. Mo- 
dern Philosophers maintain that the laws of 
motion are the same for celestial and terrestrial 
bodies ; — that all motions are natural according 
to the above description ; but that in terrestrial 
motions, friction comes in and alters their cha- 
racter, — destroys them so speedily that they 



FRICTION. 



247 



appear to have existed only during an effort. 
And that this is the case will not now be con- 
tested. Is it not then somewhat remarkable that 
the same laws which produce a state of perma- 
nent motion in the heavens, should, on the earth, 
give rise to a condition in which rest is the 
rule and motion the exception? The air, the 
waters, and the lighter portions of matter are, 
no doubt, in a state of perpetual movement ; 
over these friction has no empire : yet even their 
motions are interrupted, alternate, variable, and 
on the whole slight deviations from the condition 
of equilibrium. But in the solid parts of the 
globe, rest predominates incomparably over mo- 
tion : and this, not only with regard to the por- 
tions which cohere as parts of the same solid ; for 
the whole surface of the earth is covered with 
loose masses, which, if the power of friction were 
abolished, would rush from their places and be- 
gin one universal and interminable dance, which 
would make the earth absolutely uninhabitable. 

If, on the other hand, the dominion of friction 
were extended in any considerable degree into 
the planetary spaces, there would soon be an end 
of the system. If the planet had moved in a 
fluid, such as the Cartesians supposed, and if 
this fluid had been subject to the rules of fric- 
tion which prevail in terrestrial fluids, their 
motions could not have been of long duration. 
The solar system must soon have ceased to be a 
system of revolving bodies. 

But friction is neither abolished on the earth, 



248 C0SMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

nor active in the heavens. It operates where it 
is wanted, it is absent where it would be preju- 
dicial. And both these circumstances occasion, 
in a remarkable manner, the steadiness of the 
course of nature. The stable condition of the 
objects in man's immediate neighbourhood, and 
the unvarying motions of the luminaries of 
heaven, are alike conducive to his well-being. 
This requires that he should be able to depend 
upon a fixed order of place, a fixed course of time. 
It requires, therefore^ that terrestrial objects 
should be affected by friction, and that celestial 
should not ; as is the case, in fact. What fur- 
ther evidence of benevolent design could this 
part of the constitution of the universe supply ? 

4. There is another view which may be taken 
of the forces which operate on the earth to pro- 
duce permanency or change* Some parts of the 
terrestrial system are under the dominion of 
powers which act energetically to prevent all 
motion, as the crystalline forces by which the 
parts of rocks are bound together ; other parts 
are influenced by powers which produce a per- 
petual movement and change in the matter of 
which they consist ; thus plants and animals are 
in a constant state of internal motion, by the 
agency of the vital forces. In the former case 
rigid immutability, in the latter perpetual deve- 
lopement, are the tendencies of the agencies em- 
ployed. Now in the case of objects affected by 
friction, we have a kind of intermediate condi- 
tion, between the constantly fixed and the con- 



FRICTION. 



249 



stantly moveable. Such objects can and do 
move ; but they move but for a short time if left 
to the laws of nature. When at rest, they can 
easily be put in motion, but still not with un- 
limited ease ; a certain finite effort, different in 
different cases, is requisite for this purpose. 
Now this intermediate condition, this capacity of 
receiving readily and alternately the states of 
rest and motion, is absolutely requisite for the 
nature of man, for the exertion of will, of con- 
trivance, of foresight, as well as for the comfort 
of life and the conditions of our material exist- 
ence. If all objects were fixed and immoveable, 
as if frozen into one mass ; or if they were sus- 
ceptible of such motions only as are found in the 
parts of vegetables, we attempt in vain to con- 
ceive what would come of the business of the 
world. But, besides the state of a particle which 
cannot be moved, and of a particle which can- 
not be stopt, we have the state of a particle 
moveable but not moved ; or moved, but moved 
only while we choose : and this state is that 
about which the powers, the thoughts, and the 
wants of man are mainly conversant. 

Thus the forces by which solidity and by 
which organic action are produced, the laws of 
permanence and of developement, do not bring 
about all that happens. Besides these, there is 
a mechanical condition, that of a body exposed 
to friction, which is neither one of absolute per- 
manency nor one naturally progressive ; but is 
yet one absolutely necessary to make material 



250 



COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



objects capable of being instruments and aids to 
man ; and this is the condition of by far the 
greater part of terrestrial things. The habitual 
course of events with regard to motion and rest 
is not the same for familiar moveable articles, as 
it is for the parts of the mineral, or of the vege- 
table world, when left to themselves ; such 
articles are in a condition far better adapted 
than any of those other conditions would be, to 
their place and purpose. Surely this shows us 
an adaptation, an adjustment, of the constitution 
of the material world to the nature of man. And 
as the organization of plants cannot be conceived 
otherwise than as having their life and growth 
for its object, so we cannot conceive that friction 
should be one of the leading agencies in the 
world in which man is placed, without supposing 
that it was intended to be of use when man 
should walk and run, and build houses and 
ships, and bridges, and execute innumerable 
other processes, all of which would be impos- 
sible, admirably constituted as man is in other 
respects, if friction did not exist. And believ- 
ing, as we conceive we cannot but believe, that 
the laws of motion and rest were thus given with 
reference to their ends, we perceive in this in- 
stance, as in others, how wide and profound this 
reference is, how simple in its means, how fertile 
in its consequences, how effective in its details* 



251 



BOOK III. 

RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 

HE contemplation of the material uni- 
verse exhibits God to us as the author of 
the laws of material nature ; bringing before us 
a w r onderful spectacle, in the simplicity, the 
comprehensiveness, the mutual adaptation of 
these laws, and in the vast variety of harmoni- 
ous and beneficial effects produced by their 
mutual bearing and combined operation. But 
it is the consideration of the moral world, of the 
results of our powers of thought and action, 
w T hich leads us to regard the Deity in that light 
in w r hich our relation to him becomes a matter 
of the highest interest and importance. We 
perceive that man is capable of referring his 
actions to principles of right and wrong; that 
both his faculties and his virtues may be un- 
folded and advanced by the discipline which 
arises from the circumstances of human society ; 
that good men can be discriminated from the 
bad, only by a course of trial, by struggles with 
difficulty and temptation ; that the best men 
feel deeply the need of relying, in such conflicts, 
on the thought of a superintending Spiritual 



252 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



Power; that our views of justice, our capacity 
for intellectual and moral advancement, and a 
crowd of hopes and anticipations which rise in 
our bosoms unsought, and cling there with inex- 
haustible tenacity, will not allow us to acquiesce 
in the belief that this life is the end of our exist- 
ence. We are thus led to see that our relation 
to the Superintender of our moral being, to the 
Depositary of the supreme law of just and right, 
is a relation of incalculable consequence. We 
find that we cannot be permitted to be merely 
contemplators and speculators with regard to the 
Governor of the moral world; we must obey 
His will ; we must turn our affections to Him ; 
we must advance in His favour ; or we offend 
against the nature of our position in the scheme 
of which He is the author and sustainer. 

It is far from our purpose to represent natural 
religion as of itself sufficient for our support and 
guidance ; or to underrate the manner in which 
our views of the Lord of the universe have been, 
much more, perhaps, than we are sometimes 
aware, illustrated and confirmed by lights de- 
rived from revelation. We do not here speak of 
the manner in which men have come to believe 
in God, as the Governor of the moral world ; 
but of the fact, that by the aid of one or both of 
these two guides, Reason or Revelation, reflect- 
ing persons in every age have been led to such 
a belief. And we conceive it may be useful to 
poin t out some connexion between such a belief 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



253 



of a just and holy Governor, and the conviction, 
which we have already endeavoured to impress 
upon the reader, of a wise and benevolent Cre- 
ator of the physical world. This we shall en- 
deavour to do in the present book. 

At the same time that men have thus learnt to 
look upon God as their Governor and Judge, the 
source of their support and reward, they have 
also been led, not only to ascribe to him power 
and skill, knowledge and goodness, but also to 
attribute to him these qualities in a mode and 
degree excluding all limit : — to consider him as 
almighty, allwise, of infinite knowledge and in- 
exhaustible goodness ; every where present and 
active, but incomprehensible by our minds, both 
in tjie manner of his agency, and the degree of 
his perfections. And this impression concern- 
ing the Deity appears to be that which the mind 
receives from all objects of contemplation and 
all modes of advance towards truth. To this 
conception it leaps with alacrity and joy, and 
in this it acquiesces with tranquil satisfaction 
and growing confidence ; while any other view 
of the nature of the Divine Power which formed 
and sustained the world, is incoherent and un- 
tenable, exposed to insurmountable objections 
and intolerable incongruities. We shall endea- 
vour to show that the modes of employment of 
the thoughts to which the well conducted study 
of nature gives rise, do tend, in all their forms, 
to produce or strengthen this impression on the 



254 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



mind; and that such an impression, and no 
other, is consistent with the wisest views and 
most comprehensive aspects of nature and of 
philosophy, which our Natural Philosophy opens 
to us. This will be the purpose of the latter 
part of the present book. In the first place we 
shall proceed with the object first mentioned, 
the connexion which may be perceived between 
the evidences of creative power, and of moral 
government, in the world. 



Chapter I. 

The Creator of the Physical World is the 
Governor of the Moral World. 

ITH our views of the moral government 
of the world and the religious interests of 
man, the study of material nature is not and 
cannot be directly and closely connected. But 
it may be of some service to trace in these two 
lines of reasoning, seemingly so remote, a mani- 
fest convergence to the same point, a demon- 
strable unity of result. It may be useful to 
show that we are thus led, not to two rulers of 
the universe, but to one God ; — to make it ap- 
pear that the Creator and Preserver of the world 
is also the Governor and Judge of men ; that 




A MORAL GOVERNOR. 



255 



the Author of the Laws of Nature is also the 
Author of the Law of Duty 5 — that He who 
regulates corporeal things by properties of at- 
traction and affinity and assimilating power, 
is the same being who regulates the actions 
and conditions of men, by the influence of 
the feeling of responsibility, the perception of 
right and wrong, the hope of happiness, the 
love of good. 

The conviction that the Divine attributes 
which we are taught by the study of the material 
world, and those which we learn from the con- 
templation of man as a responsible agent, belong 
to the same Divine Being, will be forced upon 
us, if we consider the manner in which all the 
parts of the universe, the corporeal and intellec- 
tual, the animal and moral, are connected with 
each other. In each of these provinces of crea- 
tion we trace refined adaptations and arrange- 
ments which lead us to the Creator and Director 
of so skilful a system ; but these provinces are 
so intermixed, these different trains of contri- 
vance so interwoven, that we cannot, in our 
thoughts, separate the author of one part from 
the author of another. The Creator of the 
Heavens and of the Earth, of the inorganic and 
of the organic world, of animals and of man, of 
the affections and the conscience, appears in- 
evitably to be one and the same God. 

We will pursue this reflection a little more 
into detail. 



256 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



1. The Atmosphere is a mere mass of fluid 
floating on the surface of the ball of the earth ; 
it is one of the inert and inorganic portions of 
the universe, and must be conceived to have 
been formed by the same Power which formed 
the solid mass of the earth and all other parts of 
the solar system. But how far is the atmos- 
phere from being inert in its effects on organic 
beings, and unconnected with the world of life ! 
By what wonderful adaptations of its mechani- 
cal and chemical properties, and of the vital 
powers of plants, to each other, are the deve- 
lopement and well-being of plants and animals 
secured ! The creator of the atmosphere must 
have been also the creator of plants and animals : 
we cannot for an instant believe the contrary. 
But the atmosphere is not only subservient to 
the life of animals, and of man among the rest ; 
it is also the vehicle of voice ; it answers the 
purpose of intercourse^ and, in the case of man, 
of rational intercourse. We have seen how 
remarkably the air is fitted for this office ; the 
construction of the organs of articulation, by 
which they are enabled to perform their part of 
the work, is, as is well known, a most exquisite 
system of contrivances. But though living in 
an atmosphere capable of transmitting articulate 
sound, and though provided with organs fitted 
to articulate, man would never attain to the use 
of language, if he were not also endowed with 
another set of faculties. The powers of abstrac- 



A MORAL GOVERNOR. 



257 



tion and generalization, memory and reason, the 
tendencies which occasion the inflexions and 
combinations of words, are all necessary to the 
formation and use of language. Are not these 
parts of the same scheme of which the bodily 
faculties by which we are able to speak are an- 
other part? Has man his mental powers inde- 
pendently of the creator of his bodily frame ? 
To what purpose then, or by what cause was the 
curious and complex machinery of the tongue, 
the glottis, the larynx produced? These are 
useful for speech, and full of contrivances which 
suggest such a use as the end for which those 
organs were constructed. But speech appears 
to have been no less contemplated in the intel- 
lectual structure of man. The processes of which 
we have spoken, generalization, abstraction, rea- 
soning, have a close dependence on the use of 
speech. These faculties are presupposed in the 
formation of language, but they are developed 
and perfected by the use of language. The mind 
of man then, with all its intellectual endowments, 
is the work of the same artist by whose hands 
his bodily frame was fashioned ; as his bodily 
faculties again are evidently constructed by the 
maker of those elements on which their action 
depends. The creator of the atmosphere and of 
the material universe is the creator of the human 
mind, and the author of those wonderful powers 
of thinking, judging, inferring, discovering, by 
which we are able to reason concerning the world 
w. s 



258 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



in which we are placed ; and which aid us in 
lifting our thoughts to the source of our being 
himself. 

2. Light, or the means by which light is pro- 
pagated, is another of the inorganic elements 
which forms a portion of the mere material world. 
The luminiferous ether, if we adopt that theory, 
or the fluid light of the theory of emission, must 
indubitably pervade the remotest regions of the 
universe, and must be supposed to exist, as soon 
as we suppose the material parts of the universe 
to be in existence. The origin of light then 
must be at least as far removed from us as the 
origin of the solar system. Yet how closely con- 
nected are the properties of light with the struc- 
ture of our own bodies ! The mechanism of the 
organs of vision and the mechanism of light are, 
as we have seen, most curiously adapted to each 
other. We must suppose, then, that the same 
power and skill produced one and the other of 
these two sets of contrivances, which so remark- 
ably fit into each other. The creator of light 
is the author of our visual powers. But how 
small a portion does mere visual perception con- 
stitute of the advantages which we derive from 
vision ! We possess ulterior faculties and capa- 
cities by which sight becomes a source of hap- 
piness and good to man. The sense of beauty, 
the love of art, the pleasure arising from the con- 
templation of nautre, are all dependent on the 
eye ; and we can hardly doubt that these facul- 



A MORAL GOVERNOR. 



259 



ties were bestowed on man to further the best 
interests of his being. The sense of beauty both 
animates and refines his domestic tendencies ; 
the love of art is a powerful instrument for 
raising him above the mere cravings and satis- 
factions of his animal nature ; the expansion of 
mind which rises in us at the sight of the starry 
sky, the cloud-capt mountain, the boundless 
ocean, seems intended to direct our thoughts by 
an impressive though indefinite feeling, to the 
Infinite Author of AIL But if these faculties 
be thus part of the scheme of man's inner being, 
given him by a good and wise creator, can we 
suppose that this creator was any other than 
the creator also of those visual organs, without 
which the faculties could have no operation and 
no existence ? As clearly as light and the eye 
are the work of the same author, so clearly also 
do our capacities for the most exalted visual 
pleasures, and the feelings flowing from them, 
proceed from the same Divine Hand, by which 
the mechanism of light was constructed. 

3. The creator of the earth must be conceived 
to be the author also of all those qualities in the 
soil, chemical and whatever else, by which it 
supports vegetable life, under all the modifica- 
tions of natural and artificial condition. Among* 
the attributes which the earth thus possesses, 
there are some which seem to have an especial 
reference to man in a state of society. Such are 
the power of the earth to increase its produce 



260 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



under the influence of cultivation, and the ne- 
cessary existence of property in land, in order 
that this cultivation may be advantageously 
applied ; the rise, under such circumstances, of 
a surplus produce, of a quantity of subsistence 
exceeding the wants of the cultivators alone ; 
and the consequent possibility of inequalities of 
rank and of all the arrangements of civil society. 
These are all parts of the constitution of the 
earth. But these would all remain mere idle 
possibilities, if the nature of man had not a cor- 
responding direction. If man had not a social 
and economical tendency, a disposition to con- 
gregate and co-operate, to distribute possessions 
and offices among the members of the com- 
munity, to make and obey and enforce laws, the 
earth would in vain be ready to respond to the 
care of the husbandman. Must we not then 
suppose that this attribute of the earth was be- 
stowed upon it by Him who gave to man those 
corresponding attributes, through which the ap- 
parent niggardliness of the soil is the source of 
general comfort and security, of polity and law ? 
Must we not suppose that He who created the 
soil, also inspired man with those social desires 
and feelings which produce cities and states, 
laws and institutions, arts and civilization ; and 
that thus the apparently inert mass of earth is a 
part of the same scheme as those faculties and 
powers with which man's moral and intellectual 
progress is most connected ? 



A MORAL GOVERNOR. 



261 



4. Again : — It will hardly be questioned that 
the author of the material elements is also the 
author of the structure of animals, which is 
adapted to and provided for by the constitution 
of the elements in such innumerable ways. But 
the author of the bodily structure of animals 
must also be the author of their instincts, for 
without these the structure would not answer 
its purpose. And these instincts frequently 
assume the character of affections in a most re- 
markable manner. The love of offspring, of 
home, of companions, are often displayed by ani- 
mals, in a way that strikes the most indifferent 
observer; and yet these affections will hardly 
be denied to be a part of the same scheme as the 
instincts by which the same animals seek food 
and the gratifications of sense. Who can doubt 
that the anxious and devoted affection of the 
mother-bird for her young after they are hatched, 
is a part of the same system of Providence as 
the instinct by which she is impelled to sit upon 
her eggs? and this, of the same by which her 
eggs are so organized that incubation leads to the 
birth of the young animal? Nor, again, can we; 
imagine that while the structure and affections 
of animals belong to one system of things, the 
affections of man, in many respects so similar to 
those of animals, and connected with the bodily 
frame in a manner so closely analogous, can be- 
long to a different scheme. Who, that reads 
the touching instances of maternal affection, re- 



262 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



lated so often of the women of all nations, and 
of the females of all animals, can doubt that the 
principle of action is the same in the two cases 
though enlightened in one of them by the ra- 
tional faculty ? And who can place in separate 
provinces the supporting and protecting love of 
the father and of the mother ? or consider as en- 
tirely distinct from these, and belonging to ano- 
ther part of our nature, the other kinds of family 
affection ? or disjoin man's love of his home, his 
clan, his tribe, his country, from the affection 
which he bears to his family? The love of off- 
spring, home, friends, in man, is then part of 
the same system of contrivances of which bo- 
dily organization is another part. And thus the 
author of our corporeal frame is also the author 
of our capacity of kindness and resentment, of 
our love and of our wish to be loved, of all the 
emotions which bind us to individuals, to our 
families, and to our kind. 

It is not necessary here to follow' out and 
classify these emotions and affections ; or to ex- 
amine how they are combined and connected 
with our other motives of action, mutually giving 
and receiving strength and direction. The de- 
sire of esteem, of power, of knowledge, of society, 
the love of kindred, of friends, of our country, 
are manifestly among the main forces by which 
man is urged to act and to abstain. And as 
these parts of the constitution of man are clearly 
intended, as we conceive, to impel him in his 



A MORAL GOVERNOR. 



263 



appointed path ; so we conceive that they are 
no less clearly the work of the same great 
Artificer who created the heart, the eye, the 
hand, the tongue, and that elemental world in 
which, by means of these instruments, man 
pursues the objects of his appetites, desires, and 
affections. 

5. But if the Creator of the world be also the 
author of our intellectual powers, of our feeling 
for the beautiful and the sublime, of our social 
tendencies, and of our natural desires and affec- 
tions, we shall find it impossible not to ascribe 
also to Him the higher directive attributes of our 
nature, the conscience and the religious feeling, 
the reference of our actions to the rule of duty 
and to the will of God. 

It would not suit the plan of the present trea- 
tise to enter into any detailed analysis of the 
connexion of these various portions of our moral 
constitution. But we may observe that the 
existence and universality of the conception of 
duty and right cannot be doubted, however men 
may differ as to its original or derivative nature. 
All men are perpetually led to form judgments 
concerning actions, and emotions which lead to 
action, as right or wrong ; as what they ought or 
ought not to do or feel. There is a faculty which 
approves and disapproves, acquits or condemns 
the workings of our other faculties. Now, what 
shall we say of such a judiciary principle, thus 
introduced among our motives to action ? Shall 



264 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



we conceive that while the other springs of action 
are balanced against each other by our Creator, 
this, the most pervading and universal regulator, 
was no part of the original scheme? That — 
while the love of animal pleasures, of power, of 
fame, the regard for friends, the pleasure of 
bestowing pleasure, were infused into man as 
influences by which his course of life was to be 
carried on, and his capacities and powers deve- 
loped and exercised ;— this reverence for a moral 
law, this acknowledgment of the obligation of 
duty, — a feeling which is everywhere found, 
and which may become a powerful, a predomi- 
nating motive of action, — was given for no pur- 
pose, and belongs not to the design ? Such an 
opinion would be much as if we should acknow- 
ledge the skill and contrivance manifested in 
the other parts of a ship, but should refuse to 
recognize the rudder as exhibiting any evidence 
of a purpose. Without the reverence which the 
opinion of right inspires, and the scourge of 
general disapprobation inflicted on that which 
is accounted wicked, society could scarcely go 
on ; and certainly the feelings and thoughts and 
characters of men could not be w T hat they are. 
Those impulses of nature which involve no 
acknowledgment of responsibility, and the play 
and struggle of interfering wishes, might pre- 
serve the species in some shape of existence, as 
we see in the case of brutes. But a person 
must be strangely constituted, who, living amid 



A MORAL GOVERNOR. 



265 



the respect for law, the admiration for what is 
good, the order and virtues and graces of 
civilized nations, (all which have their origin in 
some degree in the feeling of responsibility) can 
maintain that all these are casual and extraneous 
circumstances, no way contemplated in the for- 
mation of man ; and that a condition in which 
there should be no obligation in law, no merit 
in self-restraint, no beauty in virtue, is equally 
suited to the powers and the nature of man, and 
was equally contemplated when those powers 
were given him. 

If this supposition be too extravagant to be 
admitted, as it appears to be, it remains then 
that man, intended, as we have already seen 
from his structure and properties, to be a dis- 
coursing, social being, acting under the in- 
fluence of affections, desires, and purposes, was 
also intended to act under the influence of a 
sense of duty ; and that the acknowledgment of 
the obligation of a moral law is as much part of 
his nature, as hunger or thirst, maternal love or 
the desire of power ; that, therefore, in conceiv- 
ing man as the work of a Creator, we must 
imagine his powers and character given him 
with an intention on the Creator's part that this 
sense of duty should occupy its place in his con- 
stitution as an active and thinking being : and 
that this directive and judiciary principle is a 
part of the work of the same Author who made 
the elements to minister to the material func- 



266 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



tions, and the arrangements of the world to 
occupy the individual and social affections of 
his living creatures. 

This principle of conscience, it may further 
be observed, does not stand upon the same level 
as the other impulses of our constitution by 
which we are prompted or restrained. By its 
very nature and essence, it possesses a supre- 
macy over all others. " Your obligation to 
obey this law is its being the law of your nature. 
That your conscience approves of and attests 
such a course of action is itself alone an obliga- 
tion. Conscience does not only offer itself to 
show us the way we should walk in, but it like^ 
wise carries its own authority with it, that it is 
our natural guide : the guide assigned us by the 
author of our nature."* That we ought to do 
an action, is of itself a sufficient and ultimate 
answer to the questions, why we should do it ? — 
how we are obliged to do it ? The conviction of 
duty implies the soundest reason, the strongest 
obligation, of which our nature is susceptible. 

We appear then to be using only language 
which is well capable of being justified, when 
we speak of this irresistible esteem for what is 
right, this conviction of a rule of action extend- 
ing beyond the gratification of our irrefiective 
impulses, as an impress stamped upon the human 
mind by the Deity himself ; a trace of His na- 



* Butler, Serm. S. 



A MORAL GOVERNOR. 



267 



ture ; an indication of His will ; an announce- 
ment of His purpose ; a promise of His favour ; 
and though this faculty may need to be con- 
firmed and unfolded, instructed and assisted by 
other aids, it still seems to contain in itself a 
sufficient intimation that the highest objects of 
man's existence are to be attained, by means of 
a direct and intimate reference of his thoughts 
and actions to the Divine Author of his being. 

Such then is the Deity to which the researches 
of Natural Theology point ; and so far is the 
train of reflections in which we have engaged, 
from being merely speculative and barren. With 
the material world we cannot stop. If a superior 
Intelligence have ordered and adjusted the suc- 
cession of seasons and the structure of the plants 
of the field, we must allow far more than this at 
first sight would seem to imply. We must ad- 
mit still greater powers, still higher wisdom for 
the creation of the beasts of the forest with their 
faculties ; and higher wisdom still and more 
transcendent attributes, for the creation of man. 
And when we reach this point, we find that it is 
not knowledge only, not power only, not fore- 
sight and beneficence alone, which we must 
attribute to the Maker of the World ; but that 
we must consider him as the Author, in us, of 
a reverence for moral purity and rectitude ; 
and, if the author of such emotions in us, how 
can we conceive of Him otherwise, than that 
these qualities are parts of his nature ; and that 



268 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



he is not only wise and great, and good, incom- 
parably beyond our highest conceptions, but 
also conformed in his purposes to the rule 
which he thus impresses upon us, that is, Holy 
in the highest degree which we can image to 
ourselves as possible. 



Chapter II. 
On the Vastness of the Universe. 

I. pjj|||HE aspect of the world, even without 
§|§||p any of the peculiar lights which science 
throws upon it, is fitted to give us an idea of the 
greatness of the power by which it is directed 
and governed, far exceeding any notions of 
power and greatness which are suggested by 
any other contemplation. The number of human 
beings who surround us — the various conditions 
requisite for their life, nutrition, well-being, all 
fulfilled; — the way in which these conditions 
are modified, as we pass in thought to other 
countries, by climate, temperament, habit 
the vast amount of the human population of the 
globe thus made up ; — yet man himself but one 
among almost endless tribes of animals ; — the 
forest, the field, the desert, the air, the ocean, 
all teeming with creatures whose bodily wants 
are as carefully provided for as his ; — -the sun, 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. 269 

the clouds, the winds, all attending, as it were, 
on these organized beings ; — a host of beneficent 
energies, unwearied by time and succession, 
pervading every corner of the earth ; — this 
spectacle cannot but give the eontemplator a 
lofty and magnificent conception of the Author 
of so vast a work, of the Ruler of so wide and 
rich an empire, of the Provider for so many and 
varied wants, the Director and Adjuster of such 
complex and jarring interests. 

But when we take a more exact view of this 
spectacle, and aid our vision by the discoveries 
which have been made of the structure and 
extent of the universe, the impression is incal- 
culably increased. 

The number and variety of animals, the ex- 
quisite skill displayed in their structure, the 
comprehensive and profound relations by which 
they are connected, far exceed any thing which 
we could have beforehand imagined. But the 
view of the universe expands also on another 
side. The earth, the globular body thus covered 
with life, is not the only globe in the universe. 
There are, circling about our own sun, six 
others, so far as we can judge, perfectly ana- 
logous in their nature : besides our moon and 
other bodies analogous to it. No one can resist 
the temptation to conjecture, that these globes, 
some of them much larger than our own, are 
not dead and barren ; —that they are, like ours, 
occupied with organization, life, intelligence. 



270 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



To conjecture is all that we can do, yet even by 
the perception of such a possibility, our view of 
the domain of nature is enlarged and elevated. 
The outermost of the planetary globes of which 
we have spoken is so far from the sun, that the 
central luminary must appear to the inhabitants 
of that planet, if any there are, no larger than 
Venus does to us ; and the length of their year 
will be 82 of ours. 

But astronomy carries us still onwards. It 
teaches us that, with the exception of the planets 
already mentioned, the stars which we see have 
no immediate relation to our system. The ob- 
vious supposition is that they are of the nature 
and order of our sun : the minuteness of their 
apparent magnitude agrees, on this supposition, 
with the enormous and almost inconceivable 
distance which, from all the measurements of 
astronomers, we are led to attribute to them. 
If then these are suns, they may, like our sun, 
have planets revolving round them ; and these 
may, like our planet, be the seats of vegetable 
and animal and rational life : — we may thus 
have in the universe worlds, no one knows how 
many, no one can guess how varied ; — but how- 
ever many, however varied, they are still but so 
many provinces in the same empire, subject to 
common rules, governed by a common power. 

But the stars which we see with the naked 
eye are but a very small portion of those which 
the telescope unveils to us. The most imperfect 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. 271 

telescope will discover some that are invisible 
without it ; the very best instrument perhaps 
does not show us the most remote. The number 
of stars which crowd some parts of the heavens 
is truly marvellous : Dr. Herschel calculated 
that a portion of the milky way, about 10 de- 
grees long and 2\ broad, contained 258,000. 
In a sky so occupied the moon would eclipse 
2000 of such stars at once. 

We learn too from the telescope that even in 
this province the variety of nature is not ex- 
hausted. Not only do the stars differ in colour 
and appearance, but some of them grow periodi- 
cally fainter and brighter, as if they were dark 
on one side, and revolved on their axes. In 
other cases two stars appear close to each other, 
and in some of these cases it has been clearly 
established, that the two have a motion of revo- 
lution about each other ; thus exhibiting an 
arrangement new to the astronomer, and giving 
rise, possibly, to new conditions of worlds. In 
other instances again, the telescope shows, not 
luminous points, but extended masses of dilute 
light, like bright clouds, hence called nebulce. 
Some have supposed (as we have noticed in the 
last book) that such nebulae by further conden- 
sation might become suns ; but for such opinions 
we have nothing but conjecture. Some stars 
again have undergone permanent changes ; or 
have absolutely disappeared, as the celebrated 
star of 1572, in the constellation Cassiopea. 



272 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



If we take the whole range of created objects 
in our own system, from the sun down to the 
smallest animalcule, and suppose such a system, 
or something in some way analogous to it, to be 
repeated for each of the millions of stars which 
the telescope reveals to us, we obtain a repre- 
sentation of the material universe ; at least a 
representation which to many persons appears 
the most probable one. And if we contemplate 
this aggregate of systems as the work of a Crea- 
tor, which in our own system we have found 
ourselves so irresistibly led to do, we obtain a 
sort of estimate of the extent through which his 
creative energy may be traced, by taking the 
widest view of the universe which our faculties 
have attained. 

If we consider further the endless and ad- 
mirable contrivances and adaptations which 
philosophers and observers have discovered in 
every portion of our own system; every new 
step of our knowledge showing us something 
new in this respect ; and if we combine this 
consideration with the thought how small a 
portion of the universe our knowledge includes, 
we shall, without being able at all to discern the 
extent of the skill and wisdom displayed in the 
creation, see something of the character of the 
design, and of the copiousness and ampleness of 
the means which the scheme of the world ex- 
hibits. And when we see that the tendency of 
all tfie arrangements which we can comprehend 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. 273 



is to support the existence, to develope the facul- 
ties, to promote the well-being of these countless 
species of creatures ; we shall have some im- 
pression of the beneficence and love of the Crea- 
tor, as manifested in the physical government of 
his creation. 

2. It is extremely difficult to devise any means 
of bringing before a common apprehension the 
scale on which the universe is constructed, the 
enormous proportion which the larger dimen- 
sions bear to the smaller, and the amazing num- 
ber of steps from larger to smaller, or from small 
to larger, which the consideration of it offers. 
The following comparative representations may 
serve to give the reader to whom the subject is 
new some idea of these steps. 

If we suppose the earth to be represented 
by a globe a foot in diameter, the distance of 
the sun from the earth will be about two miles ; 
the diameter of the sun, on the same supposition, 
will be something above one hundred feet, and 
consequently his bulk such as might be made 
up of two hemispheres, each about the size of 
the dome of St. Paul's. The moon will be thirtv 
feet from us, and her diameter three inches, 
about that of a cricket ball. Thus the sun 
would much more than occupy all the space 
within the moon's orbit. On the same scale, 
Jupiter would be above ten miles from the sun, 
and Uranus forty. We see then how thinly 
scattered through space are the heavenly bodies, 

w. T 



274 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



The fixed stars would be at an unknown dis- 
tance, but, probably, if all distances were thus 
diminished, no star would be nearer to such a 
one-foot earth, than the moon now is to us. 

On such a terrestrial globe the highest moun- 
tains would be about l-80th of an inch high, and 
consequently only just distinguishable. We may 
imagine therefore how imperceptible would be 
the largest animals. The whole organized cover- 
ing of such an earth would be quite undiscover- 
able by the eye, except perhaps by colour, like 
the bloom on a plum. 

In order to restore the earth and its inhabi- 
tants to their true dimensions, we must magnify 
the length, breadth, and thickness of every part 
of our supposed models forty millions of times ; 
and to preserve the proportions, we must increase 
equally the distances of the sun and of the stars 
from us. They seem thus to pass off into in- 
finity ; yet each of them thus removed, has its 
system of mechanical and perhaps of organic 
processes going on upon its surface. 

But the arrangements of organic life which we 
can see with the naked eye are few, compared 
with those which the microscope detects. We 
know that we may magnify objects thousands of 
times, and still discover fresh complexities of 
structure ; if we suppose, therefore, that we thus 
magnify every member of the universe and every 
particle of matter of which it consists ; we may 
imagine that we make perceptible to our senses 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. 275 

the vast multitude of organized adaptations which 
lie hid on every side of us ; and in this manner 
we approach towards an estimate of the extent 
through which we may trace the power and skill 
of the Creator, by scrutinizing his work with the 
utmost subtlety of our faculties. 

3. The other numerical quantities which we 
have to consider in the phenomena of the uni- 
verse are on as gigantic a scale as the distances 
and sizes. By the rotation of the earth on its 
axis, the parts of the equator move at the rate of 
a thousand miles an hour, and the portions of 
the earth's surface which are in our latitude, 
at about six hundred. The former velocity is 
nearly that with which a cannon ball is dis- 
charged from the mouth of a gun ; but, large as 
it is, it is inconsiderable compared with the ve- 
locity of the earth in its orbit about the sun. 
This latter velocity is sixty-five times the former. 
By the rotatory motion of the earth, a point of 
its surface is carried sometimes forwards and 
sometimes backwards with regard to the annual 
progression ; but in consequence of the great 
predominance of the annual motion in amount, 
the diurnal scarcely affects it either way in any 
appreciable degree. And even the velocity of 
the earth in her orbit is inconsiderable compared 
with that of light ; which comparison, however, 
we shall not make ; since, according to the theory 
we have considered as most probable, the motion 
of light is not a transfer of matter but of motion 
from one part of space to another. 



276 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



The extent of the scale of density of different 
substances has already been mentioned ; gold is 
twenty times as heavy as water ; air is eight 
hundred and thirty times lighter, steam eight 
thousand times lighter than water ; the lumini- 
ferous ether is incomparably rarer than steam : 
and this is true of the matter of light, whether 
we adopt the undulatory theory or any other. 

4. The above estimates are vast in amount, 
and almost oppressive to our faculties. They be- 
long to the measurement of the powers which are 
exerted in the universe, and of the spaces through 
which their efficacy reaches (for the most distant 
bodies are probably connected both by gravity 
and light). But these estimates cannot be said 
so much to give us any notion of the powers of 
the Deity, as to correct the errors we should fall 
into by supposing his powers to have any limits 
like those which belong to our faculties : — by 
supposing that numbers, and spaces, and forces, 
and combinations, which would overwhelm us, 
are any obstacle to the arrangements which his 
plan requires. We can easily understand that to 
an intelligence surpassing ours in degree only, 
that may be easy which is impossible to us. The 
child who cannot count beyond four, the savage 
who has no name for any number above five, 
cannot comprehend the possibility of dealing 
with thousands and millions : yet a little addi- 
tional developement of the intellect makes such 
numbers conceivable and manageable. The dif- 



VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. 277 

ficulty which appears to reside in numbers and 
magnitudes and stages of subordination, is one 
produced by judging from ourselves — by mea- 
suring with our own sounding line ; when that 
reaches no bottom, the ocean appears unfathom- 
able. Yet in fact how is a hundred millions of 
miles a great distance? how is a hundred mil- 
lions of times a great ratio ? Not in itself ; this 
greatness is no quality of the numbers which can 
be proved like their mathematical properties ; 
on the contrary, all that absolutely belongs to 
number, space, and ratio, must, we know demon- 
strably, be equally true of the largest and the 
smallest. It is clear that the greatness of these 
expressions of measure has reference to our facul- 
ties only. Our astonishment and embarrass- 
ment take for granted the limits of our own 
nature. We have a tendency to treat a difference 
of degree and of addition, as if it were a dif- 
ference of kind and of transformation. The ex- 
istence of the attributes, design, power, good- 
ness, is a matter depending on obvious grounds : 
about these qualities there can be no mistake : if 
we can know anything, we can know these attri- 
butes when we see them. But the extent, the 
limits of such attributes must be determined by 
their effects ; our knowledge of their limits by 
what we see of the effects. Nor is any extent, 
any amount of power and goodness improbable 
beforehand : we know that these must be great, 
we cannot tell how great. We should not expect 



278 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



beforehand to find them bounded ; and therefore 
when the boundless prospect opens before us, we 
may be bewildered, but we have no reason to 
be shaken in our conviction of the reality of the 
cause from which their effects proceed : we may 
feel ourselves incapable of following the train of 
thought, and may stop, but we have no rational 
motive for quitting the point which we have thus 
attained in tracing the Divine Perfections. 

On the contrary, those magnitudes and pro- 
portions which, leave our powers of conception 
far behind ; — that ever-expanding view which is 
brought before us, of the scale and mechanism, 
the riches and magnificence, the population and 
activity of the universe ; — may reasonably serve, 
not to disturb, but to enlarge and elevate our 
conceptions of the Maker and Masterof all; to 
feed an ever-growing admiration of His wonder- 
ful nature ; and to excite a desire to be able to 
contemplate more steadily and conceive less in- 
adequately the scheme of his government and the 
operation of his power. 



279 



Chapter III. 

On Mans Place in the Universe. 

HE mere aspect of the starry heavens, 
without taking into account the view of 
them to which science introduces us, tends 
strongly to force upon man the impression of 
his own insignificance. The vault of the sky 
arched at a vast and unknown distance over 
our heads ; the stars, apparently infinite in 
number, each keeping its appointed place and 
course, and seeming to belong to a wide system 
of things which has no relation to the earth ; 
while man is but one among many millions of 
the earth's inhabitants; — all this makes the 
contemplative spectator feel how exceedingly 
small a portion of the universe he is ; how 
■little he must be, in the eyes of an intelligence 
which can embrace the whole. Every person, 
in every age and country, will recognise as 
irresistibly natural the train of thought ex- 
pressed by the Hebrew psalmist : " when I 
consider the heavens, the work of thy hands — 
the moon and the stars which thou hast or- 
dained — Lord, what is man that thou art mind- 
ful of him, or the son of man that thou re- 
gar dest him ?" 




280 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



If this be the feeling of the untaught person, 
when he contemplates the aspect of the skies, 
such as they offer themselves to a casual and 
unassisted glance, the impression must needs be 
incalculably augmented, when we look at the 
universe with the aid of astronomical discovery 
and theory. We then find, that a few of the 
shining points which we see scattered on the 
face of the sky in such profusion, appear to be 
of the same nature as the earth, and may per- 
haps, as analogy would suggest, be like the 
earth, the habitations of organized beings ; — 
that the rest of " the host of heaven" may, by a 
like analogy, be conjectured to be the centres of 
similar systems of revolving worlds; — that the 
vision of man has gone travelling onwards, to 
an extent never anticipated, through this multi- 
tude of systems, and that while myriads of new 
centres start up at every advance, he appears as 
yet not to have received any intimation of a 
limit. Every person probably feels, at first, 
lost, confounded, overwhelmed, with the vast- 
ness of this spectacle ; and seems to himself, as 
it were, annihilated by the magnitude and mul- 
titude of the objects which thus compose the 
universe. The distance between him and the 
Creator of the world appears to be increased 
beyond measure by this disclosure. It seems 
as if a single individual could have no chance 
and no claim for the regard of the Ruler of the 
whole. 



man's place in the UNIVERSE. 281 

The mode in which the belief of God's govern- 
ment of the physical world is important and in- 
teresting to man, is, as has already been said, 
through the connexion which this belief has 
with the conviction of God's government of the 
moral world; this latter government being, 
from its nature, one which has a personal rela- 
tion to each individual, his actions and thoughts. 
It will, therefore, illustrate our subject to show 
that this impression of the difficulty of a per- 
sonal superintendence and government, exer- 
cised by the Maker of the world over each of 
his rational and free creatures, is founded upon 
illusory views; and that on an attentive and 
philosophical examination of the subject, such a 
government is in accordance with all that we 
can discover of the scheme and the scale of the 
universe. 

1. We may, in the first place, repeat the ob- 
servation made in the last chapter, on the con- 
fusion which sometimes arises in our minds, and 
makes us consider the number of the objects of 
the Divine care as a difficulty in the way of its 
exlercise. If we can conceive this care employed 
on a million persons— on the population of a 
kingdom, of a city, of a street — there is no real 
difficulty in supposing it extended to every 
planet in the solar system, admitting each to be 
peopled as ours is ; nor to every part of the 
universe, supposing each star the centre of such 
a system. Large numbers have no peculiar 



282 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



attributes which distinguish them from small 
ones ; and when we disregard the common 
limits of our own faculties, which, though im- 
portant to us, can have no application to the 
Divine nature, it is quite as allowable to sup- 
pose a million millions of earths, as one, to be 
under the moral government of God. 

2. In the next place we may remark, not only 
that no reason can be assigned why the Divine 
care should not extend to a much greater num- 
ber of individuals than we at first imagine, but 
that in fact we know that it does so extend. It 
has been well observed, that about the same time 
when the invention of the telescope showed us 
that there might be myriads of other worlds 
claiming the Creator's care ; the invention of 
the microscope proved to us that there were in 
our own world myriads of creatures, before un- 
known, which this care was preserving. While 
one discovery seemed to remove the Divine 
Providence further from us, the other gave us 
most striking examples that it was far more 
active in our neighbourhood than we had sup- 
posed : while the first extended the boundaries 
of God's known kingdom, the second made its 
known administration more minute and careful. 
It appeared that in the leaf and in the bud, in 
solids and in fluids, animals existed hitherto 
unsuspected; the apparently dead masses and 
blank spaces of the world were found to swarm 
with life. And yet, of the animals thus re- 



man's place in the universe. 283 

vealed, all, though unknown to us before, had 
never been forgotten by Providence. Their 
structure, their vessels and limbs, their adapta- 
tion to their situation, their food and habita- 
tions, were regulated in as beautiful and com- 
plete a manner as those of the largest and 
apparently most favoured animals. The smallest 
insects are as exactly finished, often as gaily 
ornamented, as the most graceful beast or the 
birds of brightest plumage. And when we 
seem to go out of the domain of the complex 
animal structure with which we are familiar, 
and come to animals of apparently more scanty 
faculties, and less developed powers of enjoy- 
ment and action, we still find that their faculties 
and their senses are in exact harmony with their 
situation and circumstances ; that the wants 
which they have are provided for, and the 
powers which they possess called into activity. 
So that Miiller, the patient and accurate ob- 
server of the smallest and most obscure micros- 
copical animalcula, declares that all classes alike, 
those which have manifest organs, and those 
which have not, offer a vast quantity of new 
and striking views of the animal economy ; 
every step of our discoveries leading us to ad- 
mire the design and care of the Creator.* We 
find, therefore, that the Divine Providence is, 
in fact, capable of extending itself adequately 



* Miiller, Infusoria, Preface. 



284 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



to an immense succession of tribes of beings, 
surpassing what we can image or could pre- 
viously have anticipated ; and thus we may feel 
secure, so far as analogy can secure us, that the 
mere multitude of created objects cannot re- 
move us from the government and superin- 
tendence of the Creator. 

3. We may observe further, that, vast as are 
the parts and proportions of the universe, we 
still appear to be able to perceive that it is finite; 
the subordination of magnitudes and numbers 
and classes appears to have its limits. Thus, 
for anything which we can discover, the sun is 
the largest body in the universe; and at any 
rate, bodies of the order of the sun are the 
largest of which we have any evidence : we 
know of no substances denser than gold and 
platinum, and it is improbable that any denser, 
or at least much denser, should ever be detected : 
the largest animals which exist in the sea and 
on the earth are almost certainly known to us. 
We may venture also to say, that the smallest 
animals which possess in their structure a clear 
analogy with larger ones, have been already 
seen. Many of the animals which the micro- 
scope detects, are as complete and complex in 
their organization as those of larger size : but 
beyond a certain point, they appear, as they 
become more minute, to be reduced to a homo- 
geneity and simplicity of composition which 
almost excludes them from the domain of ani- 



man's place in the UNIVERSE. 285 

mal life. The smallest microscopical objects 
which can be supposed to be organic, are points,* 
or gelatinous globules, f or threads, t in which 
np distinct organs, interior or exterior, can be 
discovered. These, it is clear, cannot be con- 
sidered as indicating an indefinite progression 
of animal life in a descending scale of minute- 
ness. We can, mathematically speaking, con- 
ceive one of these animals as perfect and com- 
plicated in its structure as an elephant or an 
eagle, but we do not find it so in nature. It 
appears, on the contrary, in these objects, as if 
we were, at a certain point of magnitude, reach- 
ing the boundaries of the animal world. We 
need not here consider the hypothesis and 
opinions to which these ambiguous objects have 
given rise ; but without any theory, they tend 
to show that the subordination of organic life is 
finite on the side of the little as well as of the 
great. 

Some persons might, perhaps, imagine that a 
ground for believing the smallness of organized 
beings to be limited, might be found in what we 
know of the constitution of matter. If solids 
and fluids consist of particles of a definite, 
though exceeding smallness, which cannot fur- 
ther be divided or diminished, it is manifest 
that we have, in the smallness of these particles, 
a limit to the possible size of the vessels and 

* Monas. Miiller. Cuvier. f Volvox. 

X Vibrio. Miiller. Cuvier. 



286 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



organs of animals. The fluids which are se- 
creted, and which circulate in the body of a 
mite, must needs consist of a vast number of 
particles, or they would not be fluids : and an 
animal might be so much smaller than a mite, 
that its tubes could not contain a sufficient col- 
lection of the atoms of matter, to carry on its 
functions. We should, therefore, of necessity 
reach a limit of minuteness in organic life, if 

O 7 

we could demonstrate that matter is composed 
of such indivisible atoms. We shall not, how- 
ever, build anything on this argument ; because, 
though the atomic theory is sometimes said to 
be proved, what is proved is, that chemical and 
other effects take place as if they were the 
aggregate of the effects of certain particles of 
different elements, the proportions of which 
particles are fixed and definite ; but that any 
limit can be assigned to the smallness of these 
particles, has never yet been made out. We 
prefer, therefore, to rest the proof of the finite 
extent of animal life, as to size on the micro- 
scopical observations previously referred to. 

Probably we cannot yet be said to have 
reached the limit of the universe with the power 
of our telescopes ; that is, it does not appear 
that telescopes have yet been used, so powerful 
in exhibiting small stars, that we can assume 
that more powerful instruments would not dis- 
cover new stars. Whether or no, however, this 
degree of perfection has been reached, we have 



man's place in the universe. 287 

no proof that it does not exist ; if it were once 
obtained, we should have, with some approxi- 
mation, the limit of the universe as to the num- 
ber of worlds, as we have already endeavoured 
to show we have obtained the limits with regard 
to the largeness and smallness of the inhabitants 
of our own world. 

In like manner, although the discovery of 
new species in some of the kingdoms of nature 
has gone on recently with enormous rapidity, 
and to an immense extent; — for instance in 
botany, where the species known in the time of 
Linnaeus were about 10,000, and are now above 
100,000 ; — there can be no doubt that the num- 
ber of species and genera is really limited ; and 
though a great extension of our knowledge is 
required to reach these limits, it is our ignorance 
merely, and not their non-existence, which re- 
moves them from us. 

In the same way it would appear that the 
universe, so far as it is an object of our know- 
ledge, is finite in other respects also. Now 
when we have once attained this conviction, all 
the oppressive apprehension of being overlooked 
in the government of the universe has no longer 
any rational source. For in the superinten- 
dence of a finite system of things, what is there 
which can appear difficult or overwhelming to 
a Being such as we must, from what we know, 
conceive the Creator to be ? Difficulties arising 
from space, number, gradation, are such as we 



288 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



can conceive ourselves capable of overcoming^ 
merely by an extension of our present faculties. 
Is it not then easy to imagine that such difficul- 
ties must vanish before him who made us and 
our faculties ? Let it be considered how enor- 
mous a proportion the largest work of man 
bears to the smallest ; — the great pyramid to 
the point of a needle. This comparison does 
not overwhelm us, because we know that man 
has made both. Yet the difference between 
this proportion and that of the sun to the claw 
of a mite, does not at all correspond to the dif- 
ference which we must suppose to obtain be- 
tween the Creator and the creature. It appears 
then that, if the first flash of that view of the 
universe which science reveals to us, does some- 
times dazzle and bewilder men, a more atten- 
tive examination of the prospect, by the light 
we thus obtain, shows us how unfounded is the 
despair of our being the objects of Divine Pro- 
vidence, how absurd the persuasion that we 
have discovered the universe to be too large for 
its ruler. 

4. Another ground of satisfactory reflexion, 
having the same tendency, is to be found in the 
admirable order and consistency, the subordina- 
tion and proportion of parts, which w T e find to 
prevail in the universe, as far as our discoveries 
reach. We have, it may be, a multitude almost 
innumerable of worlds, but no symptom of 
crowding, of confusion, of interference. All 



man's place in the universe. 



289 



such defects are avoided by the manner in 
which these worlds are distributed into systems ; 
— these systems, each occupying a vast space, 
but yet disposed at distances before which their 
own dimensions shrink into insignificance ; — all 
governed by one law, yet this law so concentra- 
ting its operation on each system, that each pro- 
ceeds as if there were no other, and so regulating 
its own effects that perpetual change produces 
permanent uniformity. This is the kind of har- 
monious relation which we perceive in that part 
of the universe, the mechanical part namely, the 
laws of which are best known to us. In other 
provinces, where our knowledge is more imper- 
fect, we can see glimpses of a similar vastness 
of combination, producing, by its very nature, 
-completeness of detail. Any analogy by which 
we can extend such views to the moral world, 
must be of a very wide and indefinite kind ; yet 
the contemplation of this admirable relation of 
the arrangements of the physical creation, and 
the perfect working of their laws, is well calcu- 
lated to give us confidence in a similar beauty 
and perfection in the arrangements by which 
our moral relations are directed, our higher 
powers and hopes unfolded. We may readily 
believe that there is, in this part of the creation 
also, an order, a subordination of some relation 
to others, which may remove all difficulty arising 
from the vast multitude of moral agents and 
actions, and make it possible that the super- 
w. u 



290 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



intendence of the moral world shall be directed 
with as exact a tendency to moral good, as that 
by which the government of the physical world 
is directed to physical good. 

We may perhaps see glimpses of such an 
order, in the arrangements by which our highest 
and most important duties depend upon our re- 
lation to a small circle of persons immediately 
around us : and again, in the manner in which 
our acting well or ill results from the operation 
of a few principles within us ; as our conscience, 
our desire of moral excellence, and of the favour 
of God. We can hardly consider such prin- 
ciples otherwise than as intended to occupy their 
proper place in the system by which man's des- 
tination is to be determined; and thus, as among 
the means of the government and superinten- 
dence of God in the moral world. 

That there must be an order and a system to 
which such regulative principles belong, the 
whole analogy of creation compels us to believe. 
It would be strange indeed, if, while the me- 
chanical world, the system of inert matter, is so 
arranged that we cannot contemplate its order 
without an elevated intellectual pleasure while 
organized life has no faculties without their pro- 
per scope, no tendencies without their appointed 
object ; — the rational faculties and moral tenden- 
cies of man should belong to no systematic order, 
should operate with no corresponding purpose : 
that, while the perception of sweet and bitter has 



man's place in the universe. 291 

its acknowledged and unquestionable uses, the 
universal perception of right and wrong, the 
unconquerable belief of the merit of certain feel- 
ings and actions, the craving alike after moral 
advancement and after the means of attaining it, 
should exist only to delude, perplex, and dis- 
appoint man. No one, with his contemplations 
calmed and filled and harmonized by the view of 
the known constitution of the universe, its ma- 
chinery "wheeling unshaken" in the farthest 
skies and in the darkest cavern, its vital spirit 
breathing alike effectively in the veins of the 
philosopher and the worm ; — no one, under the 
influence of such a train of contemplations, can 
possibly admit into his mind a persuasion which 
makes the moral part of our nature a collection 
of inconsistent and futile impressions, of idle 
dreams and warring opinions, each having the 
same claims to our acceptance. Wide as is the 
distance between the material and the moral 
world; imperfect as all reasonings necessarily 
are which attempt to carry the inferences of one 
into the other; elevated above the region of 
matter as all the principles and grounds of truth 
must be, which belong to our responsibilities and 
hopes ; still the astronomical and natural philo- 
sopher can hardly fail to draw from their studies 
an imperturbable conviction that our moral na- 
ture cannot correspond to those representations 
according to which it has no law, coherency, or 
object. The mere natural reasoner may, or 



292 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 

must, stop far short of all that it is his highest 
interest to know, his first duty to pursue ; but 
even he, if he take any elevated and comprehen- 
sive views of his own subject, must escape from 
the opinions, as unphilosophical as they are com- 
fortless, which would expel from our view of the 
world all reference to duty and moral good, all 
reliance on the most universal grounds of trust 
and hope. 

Men's belief of their duty, and of the reasons 
for practising it, connected as it is with the con- 
viction of a personal relation to their Maker, 
and of His power of superintendence and re- 
ward, is as manifest a fact in the moral, as any 
that can be pointed out is in the natural world. 
By the mere analogy which has been intimated, 
therefore, we cannot but conceive that this fact 
belongs in some manner or other to the order of 
the moral world, and of its government. 

When any one acknowledges a moral governor 
of the world ; perceives that domestic and social 
relations are perpetually operating and seem in- 
tended to operate, to retain and direct men in 
the path of duty; and feels that the voice of 
conscience, the peace of heart which results from 
a course of virtue, and the consolations of devo- 
tion, are ever ready to assume their office as our 
guides and aids in the conduct of all our actions ; 
— he will probably be willing to acknowledge 
also that the means of a moral government of 
each individual are not wanting; and will no 



man's place in the universe. 293 

longer be oppressed or disturbed by the appre- 
hension that the superintendence of the world 
may be too difficult for its Ruler, and that any 
of His subjects and servants may be overlooked. 
He will no more fear that the moral than that 
the physical laws of God's creation should be 
forgotten in any particular case: and as he 
knows that every sparrow which falls to the 
ground contains in its structure innumerable 
marks of the Divine care and kindness, he will 
be persuaded that every man, however appa- 
rently humble and insignificant, will have his 
moral being dealt with according to the laws of 
God's wisdom and love ; will be enlightened, 
supported, and raised, if he use the appointed 
means which God's administration of the world 
of moral light and good offers to his use. 



Chapter IV, 

On the Impression produced by the Contemplation 
of Laws of Nature ; or, on the Conviction that 
Law implies Mind, ^ 

HE various trains of thought and reason- 
ing which lead men from a consideration 
of the natural world to the conviction of the ex- 
istence, the power, the providence of God, do 




294 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



not require, for the most part, any long or 
laboured deduction, to give them their effect on 
the mind. On the contrary, they have, in every 
age and country, produced their impression on 
multitudes who have not instituted any formal 
reasonings upon the subject, and probably upon 
many who have not put their conclusions in 
the shape of any express propositions. The 
persuasion of a superior intelligence and will, 
which manifests itself in every part of the ma- 
terial world, is, as is well known, so widely 
diffused and deeply infixed, as to have made it 
a question among speculative men whether the 
notion of such a power is not universal and 
innate. It is our business to show only how 
plainly and how universally such a belief results 
from the study of the appearances about us. 
That in many nations, in many periods, this 
persuasion has been mixed up with much that 
was erroneous and perverse in the opinions of 
the intellect or the fictions of the fancy, does not 
weaken the force of such consent. The belief 
of a supernatural and presiding power runs 
through all these errors : and while the perver- 
sions are manifestly the work of caprice and illu- 
sion, and vanish at the first ray of sober enquiry, 
the belief itself is substantial and consistent, and 
grows in strength upon every new examination. 
It was the firmness and solidity of the convic- 
tion of something Divine which gave a hold and 
permanence to the figments of so many false 



LAW IMPLIES MIND. 



295 



divinities. And those who have traced the 
progress of human thought on other subjects, 
will not think it strange, that while the funda- 
mental persuasion of a Deity was thus irre- 
moveably seated in the human mind, the de- 
velopement of this conception into a consistent, 
pure, and steadfast belief in one Almighty and 
Holy Father and God, should be long missed, 
or never attained, by the struggle of the human 
faculties ; should require long reflexion to ma- 
ture it, and the aid of revelation to establish it 
in the world. 

The view of the universe which we have prin- 
cipally had occasion to present to the reader, is 
that in which we consider its appearances as 
reducible to certain fixed and general laws. 
Availing ourselves of some of the lights which 
modern science supplies, we have endeavoured 
to show that the adaptation of such laws to each 
other, and their fitness to promote the harmo- 
nious and beneficial course of the world, may be 
traced, wherever we can discover the laws them- 
selves ; and that the conceptions of the Divine 
Power, Goodness and Superintendence which 
we thus form, agree in a remarkable manner 
with the views of the Supreme Being, to which 
reason, enlightened by the divine revelation, 
has led. 

But we conceive that the general impressions 
of mankind would go further than a mere assent 
to the argument as we have thus stated it. To 



296 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



most persons it appears that the mere existence 
of a law connecting and governing any class of 
phenomena, implies a presiding intelligence 
which has preconceived and established the law. 
When events are regulated by precise rules of 
time and space, of number and measure, men 
conceive these rules to be the evidence of 
thought and mind, even without discovering in 
the rules any peculiar adaptations, or without 
supposing their purpose to be known. 

The origin and the validity of such an im- 
pression on the human mind may appear to 
some matters of abstruse and doubtful specula- 
tion : yet the tendency to such a belief prevails 
strongly and widely, both among the common 
class of minds whose thoughts are casually and 
unsystematically turned to such subjects, and 
among philosophers to whom laws of nature are 
habitual subjects of contemplation. We con- 
ceive therefore that such a tendency may de- 
serve to be briefly illustrated ; and we trust also 
that some attention to this point may be of ser- 
vice in throwing light upon the true relation of 
the study of nature to the belief in God. 

1. A very slight attention shows us how rea- 
dily order and regularity suggest to a common 
apprehension the operation of a calm and un- 
troubled intelligence presiding over the course 
of events. Thus the materialist poet, in ac- 
counting for the belief in the Gods, though he 



LAW IMPLIES MIND. 



297 



does not share it, cannot deny the habitual 
effect of this manifestation. 

i 

Praeterea coeli rationes ordine certo 

Et varia armorum cernebant tempora vorti \ 

Nec poterant quibus id fieret cognoscere caussis. 

Ergo perfugium sibi habebant omnia Divis 

Tradere et illorum nutu facere omnia flecti. 

Lucret. v. 1182. 

They saw the skies in constant order run, 

The varied seasons and the circling sun, 

Apparent, rule, with unapparent cause, 

And thus they sought in Gods the source of laws. 

The same feeling may be traced in the early 
mythology of a large portion of the globe. We 
might easily, taking advantage of the labours of 
learned men, exemplify this in the case of the 
oriental nations of Greece, and of many other 
countries. Nor does there appear much diffi- 
culty in pointing out the error of those who 
have maintained that all religion had its origin 
in the worship of the stars and the elements ; 
and who have insinuated that all such impres- 
sions are unfounded, inasmuch as these are cer- 
tainly not right objects of human worship. The 
religious feeling, the conviction of a superna- 
tural power, of an intelligence connecting and 
directing the phenomena of the world, had not 
its origin in the worship of sun, or stars, or ele- 
ments ; but was itself the necessary though un- 
expressed foundation of all worship, and all 



298 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



forms of false, as well as true, religion. The 
contemplation of the earth and heavens called 
into action this religious tendency in man ; and 
to say that the worship of the material world 
formed or suggested this religious feeling, is to 
invert the order of possible things in the most 
unphilosophical manner. Idolatry is not the 
source of the belief in God, but is a compound 
of the persuasion of a supernatural government, 
with certain extravagant and baseless concep- 
tions as to the manner in which this government 
is exercised. 

We will quote a passage from an author who 
has illustrated at considerable length the hypo- 
thesis that all religious belief is derived from the 
worship of the elements. 

" Light, and darkness its perpetual contrast ; 
the succession of days and nights, the periodical 
order of the seasons ; the career of the brilliant 
luminary which regulates their course ; that of 
the moon his sister and rival ; night, and the 
innumerable fires which she lights in the blue 
vault of heaven ; the revolutions of the stars, 
which exhibit them for a longer or a shorter- 
period above our horizon ; the constancy of this 
period in the fixed stars, its variety in the wan- 
dering stars, the planets ; their direct and retro- 
grade course, their momentary rest ; the phases 
of the moon waxing, full, waning, divested of 
all light ; the progressive motion of the sun up- 
wards, downwards ; the successive order of the 



LAW IMPLIES MIND. 



299 



rising and setting of the fixed stars which mark 
the different points of the course of the sun, 
while the various aspects which the earth itself 
assumes mark, here below also, the same periods 
of the sun's annual motion ; . . .all these 
different pictures, displayed before the eyes of 
man, form the great and magnificent spectacle 
by which I suppose him surrounded at the mo- 
ment when he is about to create his gods," * 

What is this (divested of its wanton levity of 
expression) but to say, that when man has so far 
traced the course of nature as to be irresistibly 
impressed with the existence of order, law, 
variety in constancy, and fixity in change ; of 
relations of form and space, duration and suc- 
cession, cause and consequence, among the ob- 
jects which surround him ; there springs up in 
his breast, unbidden and irresistibly, the thought 
of superintending intelligence — of a mind which 
comprehended from the first and completely that 
which he late and partially comes to know? 
The worship of earth and sky, of the host of 
heaven and the influences of nature, is not the 
ultimate and fundamental fact in the early his- 
tory of the religious impressions of mankind. 
These are but derivative streams, impure and 
scanty, from the fountain of religious feeling 
which appears to be disclosed to us by the con- 
templation of the universe, as the seat of law 

* Dupuis. Origine des Cultes. 



300 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



and the manifestation of intellect. Time sug- 
gests to man the thought of eternity ; space of 
infinity ; law of intelligence ; order of purpose ; 
and however difficult and long a task it may be 
to develope these suggestions into clear convic- 
tions, these thoughts are the real parents of our 
natural religious belief. The only relation be- 
tween true religion and the worship of the 
elemental world is, that the latter is the partial 
and gross perversion, the former the consistent 
and pure developement of the same original 
idea. 

2. The connexion of the laws of the material 
world with an intelligence which preconceived 
and instituted the law, which is thus, as we per- 
ceive, so generally impressed on the common 
apprehension of mankind, has also struck no 
less those who have studied nature with a more 
systematic attention, and with the peculiar views 
which belong to science. The laws which such 
persons learn and study, seem, indeed, most na- 
turally to lead to the conviction of an intelligence 
which originally gave to each law its form. 

What we call a general law is, in truth, a 
form of expression including a number of facts 
of like kind. The facts are separate ; the unity 
of view by which we associate them, the charac- 
ter of generality and of law, resides in those re- 
lations which are the object of the intellect. 
The law once apprehended by us, takes in our 
minds the place of the facts themselves, and is 



LAW IMPLIES MIND. 



301 



said to govern or determine them, because it 
determines our anticipations of what they will 
be. But we cannot, it would seem, conceive a 
law, founded on such intelligible relations, to 
govern and determine the facts themselves, any 
otherwise than by supposing also an intelligence 
by which these relations are contemplated, and 
these consequences realized. We cannot then 
represent to ourselves the universe governed by 
general laws, otherwise than by conceiving an 
intelligent and conscious Deity, by whom these 
laws were originally contemplated, established, 
and applied. 

This perhaps will appear more clear when it 
is considered that the laws of which we speak 
are often of an abstruse and complex kind, de- 
pending upon relations of space, time, number, 
and other properties, which we perceive by 
great attention and thought. These relations 
are often combined so variously and curiously, 
that the most subtle reasonings and calculations 
which we can form are requisite in order to 
trace their results. Can such laws be conceived 
to be instituted without any exercise of know- 
ledge and intelligence? can material objects 
apply geometry and calculation to themselves ? 
can the lenses of the eye, for instance, be formed 
and adjusted with an exact suitableness to their 
refractive powers, while there is in the agency 
which has framed them, no consciousness of the 
laws of light, of the course of rays, of the visible 



302 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



properties of things ? This appears to be alto- 
gether inconceivable. 

Every particle of matter possesses an almost 
endless train of properties, each acting according 
to its peculiar and fixed laws. For every atom 
of the same kind of matter these laws are in- 
variably and perpetually the same, while for 
different kinds of matter the difference of these 
properties is equally constant. This constant 
and precise resemblance, this variation equally 
constant and equally regular, suggest irresistibly 
the conception of some cause, independent of the 
atoms themselves, by which their similarity and 
dissimilarity, the agreement and difference of 
their deportment under the same circumstances, 
have been determined. Such a view of the con- 
stitution of matter, as is observed by an eminent 
writer of our own time, effectually destroys the 
idea of its eternal and self-existent nature, " by 
giving to each of its atoms the essential cha- 
racters, at once, of a manufactured article and 
a subordinate agent 

That such an impression, and the consequent 
belief in a divine Author of the universe, by 
whom its laws were ordained and established, 
does result from the philosophical contemplation 
of nature, will, we trust, become still more evi- 
dent by tracing the effect produced upon men's 



* Herschel on the Study of Nat. Phil. Art. 28, 



LAW IMPLIES MIND. 



303 



minds by the discovery of such laws and pro- 
perties as those of which we have been speak- 
ing ; and we shall therefore make a few obser- 
vations on this subject. 



Chapter V. 

On Inductive Habits ; or, on the Impression 
produced on Mens minds by discovering Laws 
of Nature. 

HE object of physical science is to dis- 
cover such laws and properties as those 
of which we have spoken in the last chapter. 
In this task, undoubtedly a progress has been 
made on which we may well look with pleasure 
and admiration ; yet we cannot hesitate to con- 
fess that the extent of our knowledge on such 
subjects bears no proportion to that of our igno- 
rance. Of the great and comprehensive laws 
which rule over the widest provinces of natural 
phenomena, few have yet been disclosed to us. 
And the names of the philosophers, whose high 
office it has been to detect such laws, are even 
yet far from numerous. In looking back at the 
path by which science has advanced to its pre- 
sent position, we see the names of the great dis- 
coverers shine out like luminaries, few and scat- 




304 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



tered along the line : by far the largest portion 
of the space is occupied by those whose compa- 
ratively humble office it was to verify, to de- 
velope, to apply the general truths which the 
discoverers brought to light. 

It will readily be conceived that it is no easy 
matter, if it be possible, to analyse the process 
of thought by which laws of nature have thus 
been discovered ; a process which, as we have 
said, has been in so few instances successfully 
performed. We shall not here make any attempt 
at such an analysis. But without this, we con- 
ceive it may be shown that the constitution and 
employment of the mind on which such dis- 
coveries depend, are friendly to that belief in a 
wise and good Creator and Governor of the 
world, which it has been our object to illustrate 
and confirm. And if it should appear that 
those who see further than their fellows into the 
bearings and dependencies of the material things 
and elements by which they are surrounded, 
have also been, in almost every case, earnest 
and forward in acknowledging the relation of 
all things to a supreme intelligence and will ; 
we shall be fortified in our persuasion that the 
true scientific perception of the general consti- 
tution of the universe, and of the mode in 
which events are produced and connected, is 
fitted to lead us to the conception and belief of 
God. 

Let us consider for a moment what takes place 



INDUCTIVE HABITS. 



305 



in the mind of a student of nature when he 
attains to the perception of a law previously un- 
known, connecting the appearances which he 
has studied. A mass of facts which before 
seemed incoherent and unmeaning, assume, on a 
sudden, the aspect of connexion and intelligible 
order. Thus, when Kepler discovered the law 
which connects the periodic times with the 
diameters of the planetary orbits ; or, when 
Newton showed how this and all other known 
mathematical properties of the solar system were 
included in the law of universal gravitation ac- 
cording to the inverse square of the distance ; 
particular circumstances which, before, were 
merely matter of independent record, became, 
from that time, indissolubly conjoined by the laws 
so discovered. The separate occurrences and 
facts, which might hitherto have seemed casual 
and without reason, were now seen to be all ex- 
emplifications of the same truth. The change 
is like that which takes place when we attempt 
to read a sentence written in difficult or imper- 
fect characters. For a time the separate parts 
appear to be disjoined and arbitrary marks ; the 
suggestions of possible meanings, which succeed 
each other in the mind, fail, as fast as they are 
tried, in combining or accounting for these sym- 
bols : but at last the true supposition occurs ; 
some words are found to coincide with the mean- 
ing thus assumed ; the whole line of letters ap- 
pear to take definite shapes and to leap into 
w. x 



i 



306 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



their proper places ; and the truth of the happy 
conjecture seems to flash upon us from every 
part of the inscription. 

The discovery of laws of nature, truly and 
satisfactorily connecting and explaining pheno- 
mena, of which, before, the connexion and 
causes had been unknown, displays much of a 
similar process, of obscurity succeeded by evi- 
dence, of effort and perplexity followed by con- 
viction and repose. The innumerable conjec- 
tures and failures, the glimpses of light perpe- 
tually opening and as often clouded over, by 
which Kepler w r as tantalized, the unwearied 
perseverance and inexhaustible ingenuity which 
he exercised, while seeking for the laws which 
he finally discovered, are, thanks to his commu- 
nicative disposition, curiously exhibited in his 
works, and have been narrated by his biogra- 
phers ; and such efforts and alternations, modi- 
fied by character and circumstances, must ge- 
nerally precede the detection of any of the wider 
laws and dependencies by which the events of 
the universe are regulated. We may readily 
conceive the satisfaction and delight with which, 
after this perplexity and struggle, the discoverer 
finds himself in light and tranquillity ; able to 
look at the province of nature which has been 
the subject of his study, and to read there an in- 
telligible connexion, a sufficing reason, which 
no one before him had understood or appre- 
hended. 



INDUCTIVE HABITS. 



307 



This step so much resembles the mode in 
which one intelligent being understands and ap- 
prehends the conceptions of another, that we 
cannot be surprised if those persons in whose 
minds such a process has taken place, have been 
most ready to acknowledge the existence and 
operation of a superintending intelligence, whose 
ordinances it was their employment to study. 
When they had just read a sentence of the table 
of the laws of the universe, they could not doubt 
whether it had had a legislator. When they 
had decyphered there a comprehensive and sub- 
stantial truth, they could not believe that the 
letters had been thrown together by chance. 
They could not but readily acknowledge that 
what their faculties had enabled them to read, 
must have been written by some higher and pro- 
founder mind. And accordingly, we conceive 
it will be found, on examining the works of those 
to whom we owe our knowledge of the laws of 
nature, and especially of the wider and more 
comprehensive laws, that such persons have 
been strongly and habitually impressed with the 
persuasion of a Divine Purpose and Power 
which had regulated the events which they had 
attended to, and ordained the laws which they 
had detected. 

To those who have pursued science without 
reaching the rank of discoverers ; — who have 
possessed a derivative knowledge of the laws of 
nature which others had disclosed, and have em- 



308 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



ployed themselves in tracing the consequences 
of such laws, and systematising the body of 
truth thus produced, the above description does 
not apply ; and we have not therefore in these 
cases the same ground for anticipating the same 
frame of mind. If among men of science of this 
class, the persuasion of a supreme Intelligence 
has at some periods been less vivid and less 
universal, than in that higher class of which we 
have before spoken, the fact, so far as it has ex- 
isted, may perhaps be in some degree accounted 
for. But whether the view which we have to 
give of the mental peculiarities of men whose 
science is of this derivative kind be well found- 
ed, and whether the account we have above 
offered of that which takes place in the minds 
of original discoverers of laws in scientific re- 
searches be true, or not, it will probably be con- 
sidered a matter of some interest to point out 
historically that in fact, such discoverers have 
been peculiarly in the habit of considering the 
world as the work of God. This we shall now 
proceed to do. 

As we have already said, the names of great 
discoverers are not very numerous. The sciences 
which we may look upon as having reached or 
at least approached their complete and finished 
form, are Mechanics, Hydrostatics, and Physi- 
cal Astronomy. Galileo is the father of modern 
Mechanics ; Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton 
are the great names which mark the progress 



INDUCTIVE HABITS. 



309 



of Astronomy. Hydrostatics shared in a great 
measure the fortunes of the related science of 
Mechanics ; Boyle and Pascal were the persons 
mainly active in developing its more peculiar 
principles. The other branches of knowledge 
which belong to natural philosophy, as Che- 
mistry and Meteorology, are as yet imperfect, 
and perhaps infant sciences ; and it would be 
rash to presume to select in them, names of equal 
pre-eminence with those above mentioned : but 
it may not be difficult to show, with sufficient 
evidence, that the effect of science upon the au- 
thors of science is, in these subjects as in the 
former ones, far other than to alienate their 
minds from religious trains of thought, and a 
habit of considering the world as the work of 
God. 

We shall not dwell much on the first of the 
above mentioned great names, Galileo ; for his 
scientific merit consisted rather in adopting the 
sound philosophy of others, as in the case of the 
Copernican system, and in combating prevalent 
errors, as in the case of the Aristotelian doctrines 
concerning motion, than in any marked and 
prominent discovery of new principles. More- 
over the mechanical laws which he had a share 
in bringing to light, depending as they did, 
rather on detached experiments and transient 
facts, than on observation of the general course 
of the universe, could not so clearly suggest any 
reflexion on the government of the world at that 



310 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



period, as they did afterwards when Newton 
showed their bearing on the cosmical system. 
Yet Galileo, as a man of philosophical and in- 
ventive mind, who produced a great effect on the 
progress of physical knowledge, is a person whose 
opinions must naturally interest us, engaged 
in our present course of reasoning. There is in 
his writings little which bears upon religious 
views, as there is in the nature of his works 
little to lead him to such subjects. Yet strong 
expressions of piety are not wanting, both in his 
letters, and in his published treatises. The per- 
secution which he underwent, on account of his 
writings in favour of the Copernican system, 
was grounded, not on his opposition to the ge- 
neral truths of natural religion, which is our 
main concern at present, nor even on any sup- 
posed rejection of any articles of Christian faith, 
but on the alleged discrepancy between his 
adopted astronomical views and the declara- 
tions of scripture. Some of his remarks may 
interest the reader. 

In his third dialogue on the Copernican 
system he has occasion to speak of the opinion 
which holds all parts of the world to be framed 
for man's use alone : and to this he says, " I 
would that we should not so shorten the arm of 
God in the government of human affairs ; but 
that we should rest in this, that we are certain 
that God and nature are so occupied in the go- 
vernment of human affairs, that they could not 



INDUCTIVE HABITS. 



311 



more attend to us if they were charged with the 
care of the human race alone." In the same 
spirit, when some objected to the asserted small- 
ness of the Medicean stars, or satellites of J upi- 
ter, and urged this as a reason why they were 
unworthy the regard of philosophers, he replied 
that they are the works of God's power, the ob- 
jects of His care, and therefore may well be 
considered as sublime subjects for man's study. 

In the Dialogues on Mechanics, there occur 
those observations concerning the use of the air- 
bladder in fishes, and concerning the adaptation 
of the size of animals to the strength of the 
materials of which they are framed, which have 
often since been adopted by writers on the 
wisdom of Providence. The last of the dialogues 
on the system of the world is closed by a religi- 
ous reflexion, put in the mouth of the interlocu- 
tor who usually expresses Galileo's own opinions. 
" While it is permitted us to speculate concern- 
ing the constitution of the world, we are also 
taught (perhaps in order that the activity of the 
human mind may not pause or languish) that 
our powers do not enable us to comprehend the 
works of His hands. May success therefore 
attend this intellectual exercise, thus permitted 
and appointed for us ; by which we recognise 
and admire the greatness of God the more, in 
proportion as we find ourselves the less able to 
penetrate the profound abysses of his wisdom." 
And .that this train of thought was habitual to 



312 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



the philosopher we have abundant evidence in 
many other parts of his writings. He had 
already said in the same dialogue, " Nature (or 
God, as he elsewhere speaks) employs means in 
an admirable and inconceivable manner ; ad- 
mirable, that is, and inconceivable to us, but 
not to her, who brings about with consummate 
facility and simplicity things which affect our 
intellect with infinite astonishment. That which 
is to us most difficult to understand is to her 
most easy to execute. " 

The establishment of the Copernican and 
Newtonian views of the motions of the solar 
system and their causes, were probably the 
occasions on which religious but unphiloso- 
phical men entertained the strongest apprehen- 
sions that the belief in the government of God 
may be weakened when we thus " thrust some 
mechanic cause into his place." It is therefore 
fortunate that we can show, not only that this 
ought not to occur, from the reason of the 
thing, but also that in fact the persons who are 
the leading characters in the progress of these 
opinions were men of clear and fervent piety. 

In the case of Copernicus himself it does not 
appear that, originally, any apprehensions were 
entertained of any dangerous discrepancy be- 
tween his doctrines and the truths of religion, 
either natural or revealed. The work which 
contains these memorable discoveries was ad- 
dressed to Pope Paul III., the head, at that 



INDUCTIVE HABITS. 



313 



time (1543), of the religious world; and was 
published, as the author states in the preface, at 
the urgent entreaty of friends, one of whom was 
a cardinal, and another a bishop.* " I know," 
he] says, " that the thoughts of a philosopher 
are far removed from the judgment of the 
vulgar ; since it is his study to search out truth 
in all things, as far as that is permitted by God 
to human reason." And though the doctrines 
are for the most part stated as portions of a ma- 
thematical calculation, the explanation of the 
arrangement by which the sun is placed in the 
centre of the system is accompanied by a natural 
reflexion of a religious cast : u Who in this fair 
temple would place this lamp in any other or 
better place than there whence it may illumi- 
nate the whole ? We find then under this ordi- 
nation an admirable symmetry of the world, 
and a certain harmonious connexion of the mo- 
tion and magnitude of the orbs, such as in any 
other way cannot be found. Thus the progres- 
sions and regressions of the planets all arise 
from the same cause, the motion of the earth. 
And that no such movements are seen in the 
fixed stars, argues their immense distance from 

■ 

* Amici me cunctantem atque etiam reluctantem, retrax- 
erunt, inter quos primus fuit Nicolaus Schonbergius, Car- 
dinalis Capuanus, in omni genere literatum Celebris ; proxi- 
mus ille vir mei amantissimus Tidemannus Gisius, episcopus 
Culmensis, sacrarum ut est et omnium bonarum literarum 
studiosissimus. — De Revolutionibus. Prxf. ad Paulum III. 



314 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



us, which causes the apparent magnitude of the 
earth's annual course to become evanescent. 
So great, in short, is this divine fabric of the 
great and good God;"* " this best and most 
regular artificer of the universe," as he else- 
where speaks. 

Kepler was the person, who by further study- 
ing " the connexion of the motions and magni- 
tude of the orbs," to which Copernicus had thus 
drawn the attention of astronomers, detected 
the laws of this connexion, and prepared the 
way for the discovery, by Newton, of the me- 
chanical laws and causes of such motions. 
Kepler was a man of strong and lively piety 5 
and the exhortation which he addresses to his 
reader before entering on the exposition of 
some of his discoveries, may be quoted not only 
for its earnestness but its reasonableness also. — 
66 I beseech my reader, that not unmindful of 
the divine goodness bestowed on man, he do 
with me praise and celebrate the wisdom and 
greatness of the Creator, which I open to him 
from a more inward explication of the form of 
the world, from a searching of causes, from a 
detection of the errors of vision : and that thus, 
not only in the firmness and stability of the 
earth he perceive with gratitude the preserva- 
tion of all living things in nature as the gift of 
God, but also that in its motion, so recondite, so 



* Lib. i. ex. 



INDUCTIVE HABITS. 



315 



admirable, he acknowledge the wisdom of the 
Creator. But him who is too dull to receive 
this science, or too weak to believe the Coper- 
nican system without harm to his piety, him, I 
say, I advise that, leaving the school of astro- 
nomy, and condemning, if he please, any doc- 
trines of the philosophers, he follow his own 
path, and desist from this wandering through 
the universe, and lifting up his natural eyes, 
with which alone he can see, pour himself out 
from his own heart in praise of God the Crea- 
tor ; being certain that he gives no less worship 
to God than the astronomer, to whom God has 
given to see more clearly with his inward eye, 
and who, for what he has himself discovered, 
both can and will glorify God." 

The next great step in our knowledge of the 
universe, the discovery of the mechanical causes 
by which its motions are produced, and of their 
laws, has in modern times sometimes been sup- 
posed, both by the friends of religion and by 
others, to be unfavourable to the impression of 
an intelligent first cause. That such a supposi- 
tion is founded in error we have offered what 
appear to us insurmountable reasons for believ- 
ing. That in the mind of the great discoverer 
of this mechanical cause, Newton, the impres- 
sion of a creating and presiding Deity was con- 
firmed, not shaken, by all his discoveries, is so 
well known that it is almost superfluous to insist 
upon the fact. His views of the tendency of 



316 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 

science invested it with no dangers of this kind. 
" The business of natural philosophy is," he 
says, (Optics, Qu. 28.) " to argue from pheno- 
mena without feigning hypotheses, and to de- 
duce causes from effects, till we come to the 
very first cause, which certainly is not mecha- 
nical." " Though every true step made in this 
philosophy brings us not immediately to the 
knowledge of the first cause, yet it brings us 
nearer to it, and is on that account highly to be 
valued." The Scholium, or note, which con- 
cludes his great work, the Principia, is a well 
known and most striking evidence on this point, 
" This beautiful system of sun, planets and 
comets, could have its origin in no other way 
than by the purpose and command of an intelli- 
gent and powerful Being. He governs all 
things, not as the soul of the world, but as the 
lord of the universe. He is not only God, but 
Lord or Governor. We know him only by his 
properties and attributes, by the wise and admi- 
rable structure of things around us, and by their 
final causes ; we admire him on account of his 
perfections, we venerate and worship him on 
account of his government." 

Without making any further quotations, it 
must be evident to the reader that the succes- 
sion of great philosophers through whom man- 
kind have been led to the knowledge of the 
greatest of scientific truths, the law of universal 
gravitation, did, for their parts, see the truths 



INDUCTIVE HABITS. 



317 



which they disclosed to men in such a light 
that their religious feelings, their reference of 
the world to an intelligent Creator and Pre- 
server, their admiration of his attributes, were 
exalted rather than impaired by the insight 
which they obtained into the structure of the 
universe. 

Having shown this with regard to the most 
perfect portion of human knowledge, our know- 
ledge of the motions of the solar system, we 
shall adduce a few other passages, illustrating 
the prevalence of the same fact in other depart- 
ments of experimental science ; although, for 
reasons which have already been intimated, we 
conceive that sciences of experiment do not 
conduct so obviously as sciences of observation 
to the impression of a Divine Legislator of the 
material world. 

The science of Hydrostatics was constructed 
in a great measure by the founders of the sister 
science of Mechanics. Of those who were em- 
ployed in experimentally establishing the prin- 
ciples peculiarly belonging to the doctrine of 
fluids, Pascal and Boyle are two of the most 
eminent names. That these two great philoso- 
phers were not only religious, but both of them 
remarkable for their fervent and pervading de- 
votion, is too well known to be dwelt on. With 
regard to Pascal, however, we ought not per- 
haps to pass over an opinion of his, that the 
existence of God cannot be proved from the ex- 



318 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



ternal world. " I do not undertake to prove 
this," says lie, " not only because I do not feel 
myself sufficiently strong to find in nature that 
which shall convince obstinate atheists, but be- 
cause such knowledge without Jesus Christ is 
useless and sterile." It is obvious that such a 
state of mind would prevent this writer from 
encouraging or dwelling upon the grounds of 
natural religion ; while yet he himself is an ex- 
ample of that which we wish to illustrate, that 
those who have obtained the furthest insight 
into nature, have been in all ages firm believers 
in God. " Nature," he says in another place, 
" has perfections in order to show that she is 
the image of God, and defects in order to show 
that she is only his image." * 

Boyle was not only a most pious man as well 
as a great philosopher, but he exerted himself 
very often and earnestly in his writings to show 
the bearing of his natural philosophy upon his 
views of the divine attributes, and of the govern- 
ment of the world. Many of these dissertations 
convey trains of thought and reasoning which 
have never been surpast for their combination of 
judicious sobriety in not pressing his arguments 
too far, with fervent devotion in his conceptions 
of the Divine nature. As examples of these 
merits, we might adduce almost any portion of 
his tracts on these subjects; for instance, his 



* Pensees, Art. viii. 1. 



INDUCTIVE HABITS. 



319 



" Inquiry into the Final Causes of Natural 
Things m " his " Free Inquiry into the Vulgar 
Notion of Nature his " Christian Virtuoso;" 
and his Essay entitled " The High Veneration 
Man's Intellect owes to God/' It would be 
superfluous to quote at any length from these 
works. We may observe, however, that he 
notices that general fact which we are at present 
employed in exemplifying, that " in almost all 
ages and countries the generality of philosophers 
and contemplative men were persuaded of the 
existence of a Deity from the consideration of 
the phenomena of the universe ; whose fabric 
and conduct they rationally concluded could 
not justly be ascribed either to chance or to any 
other cause than a Divine Being." And in 
speaking of the religious uses of science, he 
says : " Though I am willing to grant that 
some impressions of God's wisdom are so con- 
spicuous that even a superficial philosopher 
may thence infer that the author of such works 
must be a wise agent ; yet how wise an agent he 
has in these works expressed himself to be, none 
but an experimental philosopher can well dis- 
cern. And 'tis not by a slight survey, but by 
a diligent and skilful scrutiny, of the works of 
God, that a man must be, by a rational and 
affective conviction, engaged to acknowledge 
that the author of nature 6 is wonderful in coun- 
sel, and excellent in working.' " 

After the mechanical properties of fluids, the 



320 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



laws of the operation of the chemical and phy- 
sical properties of the elements about us, offer 
themselves to our notice. The relations of heat 
and of moisture in particular, which play so im- 
portant a part, as we have seen, in the economy 
of our world, have been the subject of various 
researches ; and they have led to views of the 
operation of such agents, some of which we have 
endeavoured to present to the reader, and to 
point out the remarkable arrangements by which 
their beneficial operation is carried on. That 
the discoverers of the laws by which such opera- 
tions are regulated, were not insensible to the 
persuasion of a Divine care and contrivance 
which those arrangements suggest, is what we 
should expect, in agreement with what we have 
already said, and it is what we find. Among 
the names of the philosophers to whom we owe 
our knowledge on these subjects, there are none 
greater than those of Black, the discoverer of 
the laws of latent heat, and Dalton, who first 
gave us a true view of the mode in which 
watery vapour exists and operates in the atmos- 
phere. With regard to the former of these phi- 
losophers, we shall quote Dr. Thomson's account 
of the views which the laws of latent heat sug- 
gested to the discoverer.* " Dr. Black quickly 
perceived the vast importance of this discovery, 
and took a pleasure in laying before his students 



* Thomson's Hist, of Chemistry, vol. i. 321. 



INDUCTIVE HABITS. 



321 



a view of the beneficial effects of this habitude 
of heat in the economy of nature. During the 
summer season a vast magazine of heat is accu- 
mulated in the water, which by gradually emerg- 
ing during congelation serves to temper the cold 
of winter. Were it not for this accumulation of 
heat in water and other bodies, the sun would 
no sooner go a few degrees to the south of the 
equator than we should feel all the horrors of 
winter." 

In the same spirit are Mr. Dalton's reflexions, 
after pointing out the laws which regulate the 
balance of evaporation and rain,* which he him- 
self first clearly explained. "-It is scarcely 
possible/' says he, " to contemplate without ad- 
miration the beautiful system of nature by which 
the surface of the earth is continually supplied 
with water, and that unceasing circulation of a 
fluid so essentially necessary to the very being 
of the animal and vegetable kingdom takes 
place." 

Such impressions appear thus to rise irresisti- 
bly in the breasts of men, when they obtain a 
sight, for the first time, of the varied play and 
comprehensive connexions of the laws by which 
the business of the material world is carried on 
and its occurrences are brought to pass. To 
dwell upon or develope such reflexions is not 
here our business. Their general prevalence in 



* Manch. Mem. vol. v. p. 346. 
W. Y 



322 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



the minds of those to whom these first views of 
new truths are granted, has been, we trust, suffi- 
ciently illustrated. Nor are the names adduced 
above, distinguished as they are, brought for- 
ward as authorities merely. We do not claim 
for the greatest discoverers in the realms of 
science any immunity from error. In their 
general opinions they may, as others may, judge 
or reason ill. The articles of their religious 
belief may be as easily and as widely as those 
of other men, imperfect, perverted, unprofitable. 
But on this one point, the tendency of our ad- 
vances in the scientific knowledge of the uni- 
verse to lead us up to a belief in a most wise 
maker and master of the universe, we conceive 
that they who make these advances, and who 
feel, as an original impression, that which others 
feel only by receiving their teaching, must be 
looked to with a peculiar attention and respect. 
And what their impressions have commonly 
been, we have thus endeavoured to show. 



223 



Chapter "VI. 

On Deductive Habits ; or, on the Impression pro- 
duced on Mens Minds by tracing the conse- 
quences of ascertained Laws. 

HE opinion illustrated in the last chap- 
ter, that the advances which men make 
in science tend to impress upon them the reality 
of the Divine government of the world, has often 
been controverted. Complaints have been made, 
and especially of late years, that the growth of 
piety has not always been commensurate with 
the growth of knowledge, in the minds of those 
who make nature their study. Views of an irre- 
ligious character have been entertained, it is 
sometimes said, by persons eminently well in- 
structed in all the discoveries of modern times, 
no less than by the superficial and ignorant. 
Those who have been supposed to deny or to 
doubt the existence, the providence, the attri- 
butes of God, have in many cases been men of 
considerable eminence and celebrity for their 
attainments in science. The opinion that this is 
the case, appears to be extensively diffused, and 
this persuasion has probably often produced in- 
quietude and grief in the breasts of pious and 
benevolent men. 



324 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



This opinion, concerning the want of religious 
convictions among those who have made na- 
tural philosophy their leading pursuit, has pro- 
bably gone far beyond the limits of the real fact. 
But if we allow that there are any strong cases 
to countenance such an opinion, it may be worth 
our while to consider how far they admit of any 
satisfactory explanation. The fact appears at 
first sight to be at variance with the view we 
have given of the impression produced by sci- 
entific discovery ; and it is moreover always a 
matter of uneasiness and regret, to have men of 
eminent talents and knowledge opposed to doc- 
trines which we consider as important truths. 

We conceive that an explanation of such cases, 
if they should occur, may be found in a very 
curious and important circumstance belonging 
to the process by which our physical sciences 
are formed. The first discovery of new general 
truths, and the developement of these truths 
when once obtained, are two operations ex- 
tremely different — imply different mental habits, 
and may easily be associated with different 
views and convictions on points out of the reach 
of scientific demonstration. There would there- 
fore be nothing surprising, or inconsistent with 
what we have maintained above, if it should 
appear that while original discoverers of laws of 
nature are peculiarly led, as we have seen, to 
believe the existence of a supreme intelligence 
and purpose ; the far greater number of culti- 



DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 



325 



vators of science, whose employment it is to 
learn from others these general laws, and to 
trace, combine, and apply their consequences, 
should have no clearness of conviction or secu- 
rity from error on this subject, beyond what be- 
longs to persons of any other class. 

This will, perhaps, become somewhat more 
evident by considering a little more closely the 
distinction of the two operations of discovery and 
developement, of which we have spoken above, 
and the tendency which the habitual prosecution 
of them may be expected to produce in the 
thoughts and views of the student. 

We have already endeavoured in some mea- 
sure to describe that which takes place when a 
new law of nature is discovered. A number of 
facts in which, before, order and connexion 
did not appear at all, or appeared by partial 
and contradictory glimpses, are brought into a 
point of view in which order and connexion 
become their essential character. It is seen 
that each fact is but a different manifestation of 
the same principle ; that each particular is that 
which it is, in virtue of the same general truth. 
The inscription is decyphered ; the enigma is 
guessed ; the principle is understood ; the truth 
is enunciated. 

When this step is once made, it becomes pos- 
sible to deduce from the truth thus established, 
a train of consequences often in no small degree 
long and complex. The process of making 



326 



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these inferences may properly be described by 
the word Deduction. On the other hand, the 
very different process by which a new principle 
is collected from an assemblage of facts, has 
been termed Induction ; the truths so obtained 
and their consequences constitute the results of 
the Inductive Philosophy ; which is frequently 
and rightly described as a science which ascends 
from particular facts to general principles, and 
then descends again from these general principles 
to particular applications and exemplifications. 

While the great and important labours by 
which science is really advanced consist in the 
successive steps of the inductive ascent, in the 
discovery of new laws perpetually more and 
more general; by far the greater part of our 
books of physical science unavoidably consists 
in deductive reasoning, exhibiting the conse- 
quences and applications of the laws which have 
been discovered ; and the greater part of writers 
upon science have their minds employed in this 
process of deduction and application. 

This is true of many of those who are con- 
sidered, and justly, as distinguished and pro- 
found philosophers. In the mechanical philoso- 
phy, that science which applies the properties of 
matter and the laws of motion to the explanation 
of the phenomena of the world, this is peculiarly 
the case. The laws, when once discovered, oc- 
cupy little room in their statement, and when 
no longer contested, are not felt to need a 



DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 



327 



lengthened proof. But their consequences re- 
quire far more room and far more intellectual 
labour. If we take, for example, the laws of 
motion and the law of universal gravitation, we 
can express in a few lines, that which, when 
developed, represents and explains an innumer- 
able mass of natural phenomena. But here the 
course of developement is necessarily so long, 
the reasoning contains so many steps, the con- 
siderations on which it rests are so minute and 
refined, the complication of cases and of conse- 
quences is so vast, and even the involution 
arising from the properties of space and number 
is so serious, that the most consummate subtlety, 
the most active invention, the most tenacious 
power of inference, the widest spirit of combi- 
nation, must be tasked and tasked severely, in 
order to solve the problems which belong to 
this portion of science. And the persons who 
have been employed on these problems, and 
who have brought to them the high and admir- 
able qualities which such an office requires, have 
justly excited in a very eminent degree the ad- 
miration which mankind feel for great intellec- 
tual powers. Their names occupy a distin- 
guished place in literary history ; and probably 
there are no scientific reputations of the last 
century higher, and none more merited, than 
those earned by the great mathematicians who 
have laboured with such wonderful success in 
unfolding the mechanism of the heavens ; such 



328 



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for instance as D'Alembert, Clairault, Euler? 
Lagrange, Laplace. 

But it is still important to recollect, that the 
mental employments of men, while they are 
occupied in this portion of the task of the for- 
mation of science, are altogether different from 
that which takes place in the mind of a dis- 
coverer, who, for the first time, seizes the prin- 
ciple which connects phenomena before unex- 
plained, and thus adds another original truth to 
our knowledge of the universe. In explaining, 
as the great mathematicians just mentioned 
have done, the phenomena of the solar system 
by means of the law of universal gravitation, 
the conclusions at which they arrived were 
really included in the truth of the law, what- 
ever skill and sagacity it might require to 
develope and extricate them from the general 
principle. But when Newton conceived and 
established the law itself, lie added to our know- 
ledge something which was not contained in 
any truth previously known, nor deducible from 
it by any course of mere reasoning. And the 
same distinction, in all other cases, obtains, be- 
tween these processes which establish the prin- 
ciples, generally few and simple, on which our 
sciences rest, and those reasonings and calcula- 
tions, founded on the principles thus obtained, 
which constitute by far the larger portion of the 
common treatises on the most complete of the 
sciences now cultivated. 



DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 



329 



Since the difference is so great between the 
process of inductive generalization of physical 
facts, and that of mathematical deduction of 
consequences, it is not surprising that the two 
processes should imply different mental powers 
and habits. However rare the mathematical 
talent, in its highest excellence, may be, it is far 
more common, if we are to judge from the his- 
tory of science, than the genius which divines 
the general laws of nature. We have several 
good mathematicians in every age ; we have 
few great discoverers in the whole history of 
our species. 

The distinction being thus clearly established 
between original discovery and derivative specu- 
lation, between the ascent to principles and the 
descent from them, we have further to observe, 
that the habitual and exclusive prosecution of 
the latter process may sometimes exercise an 
unfavourable effect on the mind of the student, 
and may make him less fitted and ready to 
apprehend and accept truths different from 
those with which his reasonings are concerned. 
We conceive, for example, that a person labours 
under gross error, who believes the phenomena 
of the world to be altogether produced by me- 
chanical causes, and who excludes from his 
view all reference to an intelligent First Cause 
and Governor. But we conceive that reasons 
may be shown which make it more probable 
that error of such a kind should find a place in 



330 



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the mind of a person of deductive, than of in- 
ductive habits; — of a mere mathematician or 
logician, than of one who studies the facts of the 
natural world and detects their laws. 

The person whose mind is employed in re- 
ducing to law and order and intelligible cause 
the complex facts of the material world, is com- 
pelled to look beyond the present state of his 
knowledge, and to turn his thoughts to the 
existence of principles higher than those which 
he yet possesses. He has seen occasions when 
facts that at first seemed incoherent and anoma- 
lous, were reduced to rule and connexion ; and 
when limited rules were discovered to be in- 
cluded in some rule of superior generality. He 
knows that all facts and appearances, all partial 
laws, however confused and casual they at pre- 
sent seem, must still, in reality, have this same 
kind of bearing and dependence ; — must be 
bound together by some undiscovered principle 
of order ; — must proceed from some cause work- 
ing by most steady rules ;— must be included in 
some wide and fruitful general truth. He can- 
not therefore consider any principles which he 
has already obtained, as the ultimate and suffi- 
cient reason of that which he sees. There must 
be some higher principle, some ulterior reason. 
The effort and struggle by which he endeavours 
to extend his view, makes him feel that there is 
a region of truth not included in his present 
physical knowledge ; the very imperfection of 



DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 



331 



the light in which he works his way, suggests to 
him that there must be a source of clearer illu- 
mination at a distance from him. 

We must allow that it is scarcely possible to 
describe in a manner free from some vagueness 
and obscurity, the effect thus produced upon the 
mind by the efforts which it makes to reduce 
natural phenomena to general laws. But we 
trust it will still be allowed that there is no dif- 
ficulty in seeing clearly that a different influ- 
ence may result from this process, and from the 
process of deductive reasoning which forms the 
main employment of the mathematical cultiva- 
tors and systematic expositors of physical science 
in modern times. Such persons are not led by 
their pursuits to any thing beyond the general 
principles, which form the basis of their expla- 
nations and applications. They acquiesce in 
these ; they make these their ultimate grounds 
of truth ; and they are entirely employed in 
unfolding the particular truths which are in- 
volved in such general truths. Their thoughts 
dwell little upon the possibility of the laws of 
nature being other than we find them to be, or 
on the reasons why they are not so ; and still 
less on those facts and phenomena which philo- 
sophers have not yet reduced to any rule ; which 
are lawless to us, though we know that, in 
reality, they must be governed by some prin- 
ciple of order and harmony. On the contrary, 
by assuming perpetually the existing laws as the 



332 



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basis of their reasoning, without question or 
doubt, and by employing such language that 
these laws can be expressed in the simplest and 
briefest form, they are led to think and believe 
as if these laws were necessarily and inevitably 
what they are. Some mathematicians indeed 
have maintained that the highest laws of nature 
with which we are acquainted, the laws of 
motion and the law of universal gravitation, are 
not only necessarily true, but are even self-evi- 
dent and certain a priori, like the truths of 
geometry. And though the mathematical culti- 
vator of the science of mechanics may not adopt 
this as his speculative opinion, he may still be.so 
far influenced by the tendency from which it 
springs, that he may rest in the mechanical laws 
of the universe as ultimate and all-sufficient 
principles, without seeing in them any evidence 
of their having been selected and ordained, and 
thus without ascending from the contemplation 
of the world to the thought of an Intelligent 
Ruler. He may thus substitute for the Deity 
certain axioms and first principles, as the cause 
of all. And the follower of Newton may run 
into the error with which he is sometimes 
charged, of thrusting some mechanic cause into 
the place of God, if he do not raise his views, as 
his master did, to some higher cause, to some 
source of all forces, laws, and principles. 

When, therefore, we consider the mathema- 
ticians who are employed in successfully apply- 



DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 



333 



ing the mechanical philosophy, as men well 
deserving of honour from those who take an 
interest in the progress of science, we do 
rightly ; but it is still to be recollected, that in 
doing this they are not carrying us to any 
higher point of view in the knowledge of na- 
ture than we had attained before : they are only 
unfolding the consequences, which were already 
virtually in our possession, because they were 
implied in principles already discovered : — 
they are adding to our knowledge of effects, 
but not to our knowledge of causes : — they are 
not making any advance in that progress of 
which Newton spoke, and in which he made so 
vast a stride, in which 66 every step made brings 
us nearer to the knowledge of the first cause, 
and is on that account highly to be valued." 
And as in this advance they have no peculiar 
privileges or advantages, their errors of opinion 
concerning it, if they err, are no more to be 
wondered at, than those of common men ; and 
need as little disturb or distress us, as if those 
who committed them had confined themselves 
to the study of arithmetic or of geometry. If 
we can console and tranquillize ourselves con- 
cerning the defective or perverted views of re- 
ligious truth entertained by any of our fellow 
men, we need find no additional difficulty in 
doing so when those who are mistaken are great 
mathematicians, who have added to the riches 
and elegance of the mechanical philosophy. 



334 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



And if we are seeking for extraneous grounds 
of trust and comfort on this subject, we may 
find them in the reflexion ; — that, whatever may- 
be the opinions of those who assume the causes 
and laws of that philosophy and reason from 
them, the views of those admirable and ever- 
honoured men who first caught sight of these 
laws and causes, impressed them with the belief 
that this is " the fabric of a great and good 
God;" that " it is man's duty to pour out his 
soul in praise of the Creator ; " and that all this 
beautiful system must be referred to " a first 
cause, which is certainly not mechanical." 

2. We may thus, with the greatest propriety, 
deny to the mechanical philosophers and mathe- 
maticians of recent times any authority with 
regard to their views of the administration of 
the universe ; we have no reason whatever to 
expect from their speculations any help, when 
we attempt to ascend to the first cause and 
supreme ruler of the universe. But we might 
perhaps go further, and assert that they are in 
some respects less likely than men employed in 
other pursuits, to make any clear advance to- 
wards such a subject of speculation. Persons 
whose thoughts are thus entirely occupied in 
deduction are apt to forget that this is, after all, 
only one employment of the reason among 
more ; only one mode of arriving at truth, 
needing to have its deficiencies completed by 
another. Deductive reasoners, those who cul- 



DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 



335 



tivate science of whatever kind, by means of 
mathematical and logical processes alone, may 
acquire an exaggerated feeling of the amount 
and value of their labours. Such employments, 
from the clearness of the notions involved in 
them, the irresistible concatenation of truths 
which they unfold, the subtlety which they 
require, and their entire success in that which 
they attempt, possess a peculiar fascination for 
the intellect. Those who pursue such studies 
have generally a contempt and impatience of 
the pretensions of all those other portions of our 
knowledge, where from the nature of the case, 
or the small progress hitherto made in their 
cultivation, a more vague and loose kind of 
reasoning seems to be adopted. Now if this 
feeling be carried so far as to make the reasoner 
suppose that these mathematical and logical 
processes can lead him to all the knowledge and 
all the certainty which we need, it is clearly a 
delusive feeling. For it is confessed on all 
hands, that all which mathematics or which 
logic can do, is to develope and extract those 
truths, as conclusions, which were in reality in- 
volved in the principles on which our reason- 
ings proceeded.* And this being allowed, we 
cannot but ask how we obtain these principles ? 
from what other source of knowledge we derive 

* " Since all reasoning may be resolved into syllogisms, 
and since in a syllogism the premises do virtually assert the 
conclusion, it follows at once, that no new truth can J>e 



336 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



the original truths which we thus pursue into 
detail ? since it is manifest that such principles 
cannot be derived from the proper stores of 
mathematics or logic. These methods can ge- 
nerate no new truth ; and all the grounds and 
elements of the knowledge which, through them, 
we can acquire, must necessarily come from 
some extraneous source. It is certain, there- 
fore, that the mathematician and the logician 
must derive from some process different from 
their own, the substance and material of all our 
knowledge, whether physical or metaphysical, 
physiological or moral. This process, by which 
we acquire our first principles, (without pre- 
tending here to analyse it,) is obviously the 
general course of human experience, and the 
natural exercise of the understanding ; our in- 
tercourse w^ith matter and with men, and the 
consequent growth in our minds of convictions 
and conceptions such as our reason can deal 
with, either by her systematic or unsystematic 
methods of procedure. Supplies from this vast 
and inexhaustible source of original truths are 
requisite, to give any value whatever to the 
results of our deductive processes, w r hether ma- 
thematical or logical ; while, on the other hand, 
there are many branches of our knowledge, in 

elicited by any process of reasoning." — Whately's Logic, 
p. 223. 

Mathematics is the logic of quantity, and to this science 
the observation here quoted is strictly applicable. 



DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 



337 



which we possess a large share of original and 
derivative convictions and truths, but where it 
is nevertheless at present quite impossible to 
erect our knowledge into a complete system ; — 
to state our primary and independent truths, 
and to show how on these all the rest depend by 
the rules of art. If the mathematician is re- 
pelled from speculations on morals or politics, 
on the beautiful or the right, because the reason- 
ings which they involve have not mathematical 
precision and conclusiveness, he will remain 
destitute of much of the most valuable know- 
ledge which man can acquire. And if he at- 
tempts to mend the matter by giving to treatises 
on morals, or politics, or criticism, a form and 
a phraseology borrowed from the very few 
tolerably complete physical sciences which exist, 
it will be found that he is compelled to distort 
and damage the most important truths, so as to 
deprive them of their true shape and import, in 
order to force them into their places in his arti- 
ficial system. 

If therefore, as we have said, the mathema- 
tical philosopher dwells in his own bright and 
pleasant land of deductive reasoning, till he 
turns with disgust from all the speculations, ne- 
cessarily less clear and conclusive, in which his 
imagination, his practical faculties, his moral 
sense, his capacity of religious hope and belief, 
are to be called into action, he becomes, more 

w. z 



338 



HELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



than common men, liable to miss the roads to 
truths of extreme consequence. 

This is so obvious, that charges are frequently 
brought against the study of mathematics, as 
unfitting men for those occupations which de- 
pend upon our common instinctive convictions 
and feelings, upon the unsystematic exercise of 
the understanding with regard to common rela- 
tions and common occurrences. Bonaparte ob- 
served of Laplace when he was placed in a public 
office of considerable importance, that he did 
not discharge it in so judicious and clear-sighted 
a manner as his high intellectual fame might 
lead most persons to expect.* u He sought," 
that great judge of character said, " subtleties 
in every subject, and carried into his official 
employments the spirit of the method of infi- 
nitely small quantities," by which the mathema- 
tician solves his most abstruse problems. And 
the complaint that mathematical studies make 
men insensible to moral evidence and to poeti- 
cal beauties, is so often repeated as to show that 
some opposition of tendency is commonly per- 

* A l'interieur le ministre Quinette fut remplace par 
Laplace, geometre du premier rang, mais qui ne tarda pas a 
se montrer administrateur plus que mediocre : des son pre- 
mier travail les consuls s'apercurent qu'ils s'etaient trompes . 
Laplace ne saisissait aucune question sous son vrai point de 
vue : il eherchait des subtilites partout, n'avait que des idees 
problematiques, et portait enfin l'espritdes infiniment petits 
dans l'administration. — Memoires Merits a Ste. Helene, i. 3. 



DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 



339 



ceived between that exercise of the intellect 
which mathematics requires and those processes 
which go on in our minds when moral character 
or imaginative beauty is the subject of our con- 
templation. 

Thus, while we acknowledge all the beauty 
and all the value of the mathematical reasonings 
by which the consequences of our general laws 
are deduced, we may yet consider it possible 
that a philosopher, whose mind has been mainly 
employed, and his intellectual habits deter- 
mined, by this process of deduction, may pos- 
sess, in a feeble and imperfect degree only, some 
of those faculties by which truth is attained, and 
especially truths such as regard our relation to 
that mind, which is the origin of all law, the 
source of first principles, and which must be im- 
measurably elevated above all derivative truths. 
It would, therefore, be far from surprising, if 
there should be found, among the great authors 
of the developements of the mechanical philoso- 
phy, some who had refused to refer the pheno- 
mena of the universe to a supreme mind, pur- 
pose, and will. And though this would be, to 
a believer in the Being and government of God, 
a matter of sorrow and pain, it need not excite 
more surprise than if the same were true of a 
person of the most ordinary endowments, when 
it is recollected in what a disproportionate man- 
ner the various faculties of such a philosopher 
may have been cultivated* And our apprehen- 



.340 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



sions of injury to mankind from the influence 
of such examples will diminish, when we con- 
sider, that those mathematicians whose minds 
have been less partially exercised, the great dis- 
coverers of the truths which others apply, the 
philosophers who have looked upwards as well 
as downwards, to the unknown as well as to the 
known, to ulterior as well as proximate principles, 
have never rested in this narrow and barren doc- 
trine ; but have perpetually extended their view 
forwards, beyond mere material laws and causes, 
to a First Cause of the moral and material 
world, to which each advance in philosophy 
might bring them nearer, though its highest at- 
tributes must probably ever remain indefinitely 
beyond their reach. 

It scarcely needs, perhaps, to be noticed, that 
what we here represent as the possible source of 
error is, not the perfection of the mathematical 
habits of the mind, but the deficiency of the 
habit of apprehending truth of other kinds ; — 
not a clear insight into the mathematical conse- 
quences of principles, but a want of a clear view 
of the nature and foundation of principles ; — not 
the talent for generalizing geometrical or me- 
chanical relations, but the tendency to erect such 
relations into ultimate truths and efficient causes. 
The most consummate mathematical skill may 
accompany and be auxiliary to the most earnest 
piety, as it often has been. And an entire com- 
mand of the conceptions and processes of mathe- 



DEDUCTIVE HABITS. 



341 



matics is not only consistent with, but is the 
necessary condition and principal instrument of 
every important step in the discovery of physi- 
cal principles. Newton was eminent above the 
philosophers of his time, in no one talent so 
much as in the power of mathematical deduc- 
tion. When he had caught sight of the law of 
universal gravitation, he traced it to its conse- 
quences with a rapidity, a dexterity, a beauty of 
mathematical reasoning which no other person 
could approach ; so that oh this account, if there 
had been no other, the establishment of the 
general law was possible to him alone. He still 
stands at the head of mathematicians as well as 
of philosophical discoverers. But it never ap- 
peared to him, as it may have appeared to some 
mathematicians who have employed themselves 
on his discoveries, that the general law was an 
ultimate and sufficient principle ; that the point 
to which he had hung his chain of deduction 
was the highest point in the universe. La- 
grange, a modern mathematician of transcen- 
dent genius, was in the habit of saying, in his 
aspirations after future fame, that Newton was 
fortunate in having had the system of the world 
for his problem, since its theory could be disco- 
vered once only. But Newton himself appears 
to have had no such persuasion that the problem 
he had solved was unique and final ; he laboured 
to reduce gravity to some higher law, and the 
forces of other physical operations to an analogy 



342 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



with those of gravity, and declared that all these 
were but steps in our advance towards a first 
cause. Between us and this first cause, the 
source of the universe and of its laws, we can- 
not doubt that there intervene many successive 
steps of possible discovery and generalization, 
not less wide and striking than the discovery of 
universal gravitation : but it is still more certain 
that no extent or success of physical investiga- 
tion can carry us to any point which is not at an 
immeasurable distance from an adequate know- 
ledge of Him. 



Chapter VII. 
On Final Causes, 

E have pointed out a great number of in- 
stances where the mode in which the 
arrangements of nature produce their effect, 
suggests, as we conceive, the belief that this 
eftect is to be considered as the end and purpose 
of these arrangements. The impression which 
thus arises, of design and intention exercised in 
the formation of the world, or of the reality of 
Final Causes, operates on men's minds so gene- 
rally, and increases so constantly on every addi- 
tional examination of the phenomena of the uni- 
verse, that we cannot but suppose such a belief 
to have a deep and stable foundation. And we 




FINAL CAUSES. 



343 



conceive that in several of the comparatively few 
cases in which such a belief has been rejected, 
the averseness to it has arisen from the influence 
of some of the causes mentioned in the last 
chapter ; the exclusive pursuit, namely, of par- 
ticular trains and modes of reasoning, till the 
mind becomes less capable of forming the con- 
ceptions and making the exertions which are re- 
quisite for the apprehension of truths not inclu- 
ded among its usual subjects of thought. 

l. This seems to be the case with those who 
maintain that purpose and design cannot be 
inferred or deduced from the arrangements which 
we see around us, by any process of reasoning. 
We can reason from effects to causes, say such 
writers, only in cases where we know something 
of the nature of the cause. We can infer from 
the works of men, the existence of design and 
purpose, because we know, from past observa- 
tion, what kind of works human design and 
purpose can produce. But the universe, con- 
sidered as the work of God, cannot be com- 
pared with any corresponding work, or judged 
of by any analogy with known examples. How 
then can we, in this case, they ask, infer design 
and purpose in the artist of the universe ? On 
what principles, on what axioms, can we pro- 
ceed, which shall include this necessarily sin- 
gular instance, and thus give legitimacy and 
validity to our reasonings ? 

What has already been said on the subject of 



344 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



the two different processes by which we obtain 
principles, and by which we reason from them, 
will suggest the reply to these questions. When 
we collect design and purpose from the arrange- 
ments of the universe, we do not arrive at our 
conclusion by a train of deductive reasoning, 
but by the conviction which such combinations 
as we perceive, immediately and directly im- 
press upon the mind. u Design must have had 
a designer." But such a principle can be of no 
avail to one whom the contemplation or the de- 
scription of the world does not impress with the 
perception of design. It is not therefore at the 
end, but at the beginning of our syllogisms, not 
among remote conclusions, but among original 
principles, that we must place the truth, that 
such arrangements, manifestations, and pro- 
ceedings as we behold about us imply a Being 
endowed with consciousness, design, and will, 
from whom they proceed. 

This is inevitably the mode in which such a 
conviction is acquired ; and that it is so, we 
may the more readily believe, when we con- 
sider that it is the case with the design and will 
which we ascribe to man, no less than in that 
which we believe to exist in God. At first 
sight we might perhaps be tempted to say, that 
we infer design and purpose from the works of 
man in one case, because we have known these 
attributes in other cases produce effects in some 



FINAL CAUSES. 



345 



measure similar. But to this we must reply, 
by asking how we come to know the existence 
of human design and purpose at Jirst, and at 
all? What we see around us are certain ap- 
pearances, things, successions of events ; how 
come we ever to ascribe to other men the 
thought and will of which we are conscious our- 
selves ? How do we come to believe that there 
are other men ? How are we led to elevate, in 
our conceptions, some of the objects which we 
perceive into persons ? Undoubtedly their ac- 
tions, their words induce us to do this : we see 
that the manifestations . which we observe must 
be so understood, and no otherwise: we feel 
that such actions, such events must be con- 
nected by consciousness and personality ; that 
the actions are not the actions of things, but of 
persons ; not necessary and without significance, 
like the falling of a stone, but voluntary and 
with purpose like what we do ourselves. But 
this is not a result of reasoning : we do not infer 
this from any similar case which we have 
known ; since we are now speaking of the Jirst 
conception of a will and purpose different from 
our own. In arriving at such knowledge, we 
are aided only by our own consciousness of 
what thought, purpose, will, are : and possess- 
ing this regulative principle, we so decypher 
and interpret the complex appearances which 
surround us, that we receive irresistibly the 



346 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



persuasion of the existence of other men, with 
thought and will and purpose like our own. 
And just in the same manner, when we examine 
attentively the adjustment of the parts of the 
human frame to each other and to the elements, 
the relation of the properties of the earth to 
those of its inhabitants, or of the physical to the 
moral nature of man, the thought must arise 
and cling to our perceptions, however little it 
be encouraged, that this system, everywhere so 
full of wonderful combinations, suited to the 
preservation, and well-being of living creatures, 
is also the expression of the intention, wisdom, 
and goodness of a personal creator and go- 
vernor. 

We conceive then that it is so far from being 
an unsatisfactory or unphilosophical process by 
which we collect the existence of a Deity from 
the works of creation, that the process corres- 
ponds most closely with that on which rests the 
most steadfast of our convictions, next to that of 
our own existence, the belief of the existence of 
other human beings. If any one ever went so 
far in scepticism as to doubt the existence of 
any other person than himself, he might, so far 
as the argument from final causes is concerned, 
reject the being of God as well as that of man ; 
but without dwelling on the possibility of such 
fantasies, when we consider how impossible it 
is for men in general not to attribute per- 



FINAL CAUSES. 



347 



sonality, purpose, thought, will to each other, 
in virtue of certain combinations of appearances 
and actions, we must deem them most con- 
sistent and reasonable in attributing also per- 
sonality and purpose to God, in virtue of the 
whole assemblage of appearances and actions 
which constitute the universe, full as it is of 
combinations from which such a suggestion 
springs. The vividness, the constancy of the 
belief of a wise and good Being, thus governing 
the world, may be different in different men, ac- 
cording to their habit of directing their thoughts 
to the subject ; but such a belief is undoubtedly 
capable of becoming lively and steadfast in the 
highest degree. It has been entertained and 
cherished by enlightened and well-regulated 
minds in all ages ; and has been, at least since 
the rise of Christianity, not only the belief, but 
a pervading and ruling principle of action of 
many men, and of whole communities. The 
idea may be rendered more faint by turning the 
mind away from it, and, perhaps by indulging 
too exclusively in abstract and general specula- 
tions. It grows stronger by an actual study of 
the details of the creation ; and, as regards the 
practical consequences of such a belief, by a 
habit of referring our actions and hopes to such 
a Governor. In this way it is capable of becom- 
ing as real and fixed an impression as that of a 
human friend and master ; and all that we can 



348 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



learn, by observing the course of men's feelings 
and actions, tends to convince us, that this be- 
lief of the being and presence and government 
of God, leads to the most elevated and beneficial 
frame of mind of which man is capable. 

2. How natural and almost inevitable is this 
persuasion of the reality of Final Causes and 
consequent belief in the personality of the Deity, 
we may gather by observing how constantly it 
recurs to the thoughts, even of those who, in 
consequence of such peculiarities of mental dis- 
cipline as have been described, have repelled 
and resisted the impression. 

Thus, Laplace, of whom we have already 
spoken, as one of the greatest mathematicians of 
modern times, expresses his conviction that the 
supposed evidence of final causes will disappear 
as our knowledge advances, and that they only 
seem to exist in those cases where our ignorance 
leaves room for such a mistake. " Let us run 
over," he says, " the history of the progress of 
the human mind and its errors : we shall per- 
petually see final causes pushed away to the 
bounds of its knowledge. These causes, which 
Newton removed to the limits of the solar 
system, were not long ago conceived to obtain 
in the atmosphere, and employed in explaining 
meteors : they are, therefore, in the eyes of the 
philosopher nothing more than the expression of 
the ignorance in which we are of the real 
causes." 



FINAL CAUSES. 



349 



We may observe that we have endeavoured 
to give a very different, and, as we believe, a 
far truer view of the effect which philosophy 
has produced on our knowledge of final causes. 
We have shown, we trust, that the notion of 
design and end is transferred by the researches 
of science, not from the domain of our know- 
ledge to that of our ignorance, but merely from 
the region of facts to that of laws. We hold 
that, in this form, final causes in the atmos- 
phere are still to be conceived to obtain, no less 
than in an earlier state of meteorological know- 
ledge ; and that Newton was right, when he be- 
lieved that he had established their reality in 
the solar system, not expelled them from it. 

But our more peculiar business at present is 
to observe that Laplace himself, in describing 
the arrangements by which the stability of the 
solar system is secured, uses language which 
shows how irresistibly these arrangements sug- 
gest an adaptation to its preservation as an end. 
If in his expressions we were to substitute the 
Deity for the abstraction " nature" which he 
employs, his reflexion would coincide with that 
which the most religious philosopher would en- 
tertain. " It seems that 6 God' has ordered 
everything in the heavens to ensure the duration 
of the planetary system, by views similar to 
those which He appears to us so admirably to 
follow upon the earth, for the preservation of 



350 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



animals and the perpetuity of species.* This 
consideration alone would explain the disposi- 
tion of the system, if it were not the business of 
the geometer to go further." It may be pos- 
sible for the geometer to go further; but he 
must be strangely blinded by his peculiar pur- 
suits, if, when he has discovered the mode in 
which these views are answered, he supposes 
himself to have obtained a proof that there are 
no views at all. It would be as if the savage, 
who had marvelled at the steady working of 
the steam-engine, should cease to consider it 
a work of art, as soon as the self-regulating 
part of the mechanism had been explained to 
him. 

The unsuccessful struggle in which those per- 
sons engage, who attempt to throw off the im- 
pression of design in the creation, appears in an 
amusing manner through the simplicity of the 
ancient Roman poet of this school. Lucretius 
maintains that the eye was not made for seeing, 
nor the ear for hearing. But the terms in which 
he recommends this doctrine show how hard he 
knew it to be for men to entertain such an 
opinion. His advice is — 

* H semble que la nature ait tout dispose dans le ciel, 
pour assurer la duree du systeme planetaire, par des vues 
semblables a celles qu'elle nous parait suivre si admirable- 
ment sur la terre, pour la conservation des individus et la 
perpetuite des especes. — Sysi. du Monde, p. 442. 



FINAL CAUSES. 351 

Illud in his rebus vitium vehementer et istum 
Effugere errorem, vitareque pr ^meditator, 
Lumina ne facias oculorum clara creata, 
Prospicere ut possimus. iv. 823. 

'Gainst their preposterous error guard thy mind 
Who say each organ was for use design'd ; 
Think not the visual orbs, so clear, so bright, 
Were furnish'd for the purposes of sight. 



Undoubtedly the poet is so far right, that a 
most " vehement" caution and vigilant " pre- 
meditation" are necessary to avoid the " vice 
and error" of such a persuasion. The study of 
the adaptations of the human frame is so con- 
vincing, that it carries the mind with it, in 
spite of the resistance suggested by speculative 
systems. Cabanis, a modern French physio- 
logical writer of great eminence, may be se- 
lected as a proof of this. Both by the general 
character of his own speculations, and by the 
tone of thinking prevalent around him, the con- 
sideration of design in the works of nature was 
abhorrent from his plan. Accordingly, he joins 
in repeating Bacon's unfavourable mention of 
final causes. Yet when he comes to speak of 
the laws of reproduction of the human race, he 
appears to feel himself compelled to admit the 
irresistible manner in which such views force 
themselves on the mind. " I regard," he says, 
" with the great Bacon, the philosophy of final 
causes as barren ; but I have elsewhere ac- 



352 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



knowledged that it was very difficult for the 
most cautious man (Phomme le plus reserve) 
never to have recourse to, them in his explana- 
tions. "* 

3. It may be worth our while to consider for 
a moment the opinion here referred to by 
Cabanis, of the propriety of excluding the con- 
sideration of final causes from our natural phi- 
losophy. The great authority of Bacon is 
usually adduced on this subject. " The hand- 
ling of final causes/' says he, " mixed with the 
rest in physical enquiries, hath intercepted the 
severe and diligent enquiry of all real and phy- 
sical causes, and given men the occasion to 
stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, 
to the great arrest and prejudice of farther dis- 
covery," f 

A moment's attention will show how well this 
representation agrees with that which we have 
urged, and how far it is from dissuading the 
reference to final causes in reasonings like those 
on which we are employed. Final causes are 
to be excluded from 'physical enquiry ; that is, 
we are not to assume that we know the objects 
of the Creator's design, and put this assumed 
purpose in the place of a physical cause. We 
are not to think it a sufficient account of the 
clouds that they are for watering the earth, (to 

* Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme, i. 299. 
t De Augment. Sc. ii. 105. 



FINAL CAUSES. 



353 



take Bacon's examples,) or "that the solidness 
of the earth is for the station and mansion of 
living creatures." The physical philosopher 
has it for his business to trace clouds to the laws 
of evaporation and condensation ; to determine 
the magnitude and mode of action of the forces 
of cohesion and crystallization by which the 
materials of the earth are made solid and firm. 
This he does, making no use of the notion of 
final causes : and it is precisely because he has 
thus established his theories independently of 
any assumption of an end, that the end, when, 
after all, it returns upon him and cannot be 
evaded, becomes an irresistible evidence of an 
intelligent legislator. He finds that the effects, 
of which the use is obvious, are produced by 
most simple and comprehensive laws ; and when 
he has obtained this view, he is struck by the 
beauty of the means, by the refined and skilful 
manner in which the useful effects are brought 
about points different from those to which his 
researches were directed. We have already 
seen, in the very case of which we have been 
speaking, namely, the laws by which the clouds 
are formed and distribute their showers over 
the earth, how strongly those who have most 
closely and extensively examined the arrange- 
ments there employed (as Howard, Dalton, and 
Black) have been impressed with the harmony 
and beauty which these contrivances manifest. 

We may find a further assertion of this view 

w. a A 



354 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



of the proper use of final causes in philosophy, 
by referring to the works of one of the greatest 
of our philosophers, and one of the most pious 
of our writers, Boyle, who has an Essay on this 
subject. "I am by all means," says he, "for 
encouraging the contemplation of the celestial 
part of the world, and the shining globes that 
adorn it, and especially the sun and moon, in 
order to raise our admiration of the stupendous 
power and wisdom of him who was able to 
frame such immense bodies ; and notwithstand- 
ing their vast bulk and scarce conceivable rapi- 
dity, keep them for so many ages constant both 
to the lines and degrees of their motion, with- 
out interfering with one another. And doubt- 
less we ought to return thanks and praises to 
the divine goodness for having so placed the 
sun and moon, and determined the former, or 
else the earth, to move in particular lines for 
the good of men and other animals; and how 
disadvantageous it would have been to the inha- 
bitants of the earth if the luminaries had moved 
after a different manner. I dare not, however, 
affirm that the sun, moon, and other celestial 
bodies were made solely for the use of man : 
much less presume to prove one system of the 
tvorld to be true and another false ; because the 
former is better fitted to the convenience of 
mankind, or the other less suited, or perhaps 
altogether useless to that end." 

This passage exhibits, we conceive, that com- 



FINAL CAUSES. 



355 



bination of feelings which ought to mark the 
character of the religious natural philosopher ; 
an earnest piety ready to draw nutriment from 
the contemplation of established physical truths ; 
joined with a philosophical caution, which is not 
seduced by the anticipation of such contem- 
plations, to pervert the strict course of physical 
enquiry. 

It is precisely through this philosophical care 
and scrupulousness that our views of final 
causes acquire their force and value as aids to 
religion. The object of such views is not to 
lead us to physical truth, but to connect such 
truth, obtained by its proper processes and me- 
thods, with our views of God, the master of the 
universe, through those laws and relations which 
are thus placed beyond dispute. 

Bacon's comparison of final causes to the 
vestal virgins is one of those poignant sayings, 
so frequent in his writings, which it is not easy 
to forget. " Like them," he says, "they are 
dedicated to God, and are barren." But to 
any one who reads his work it will appear in 
what spirit this was meant. " Not because 
those final causes are not true and worthy to be 
inquired, being kept within their own pro- 
vince. " (Of the Advancement of Learning, b. 
ii. p. 142.) If he had had occasion to deve- 
lope his simile, full of latent meaning as his 
similes so often are, he would probably have 
said, that to these final causes barrenness was 



356 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



no reproach, seeing they ought to be, not the 
mothers but the daughters of our natural sci- 
ences ; and that they were barren, not by imper- 
fection of their nature, but in order that they 
might be kept pure and undefiled, and so fit 
ministers in the temple of God. 



Chapter VIII. 
On the Physical Agency of the Deity. 




t'E are not to expect that physical inves- 
\ tigation can enable us to conceive the 



manner in which God acts upon the members 
of the universe. The question, " Canst thou by 
searching find out God?" must silence the 
boastings of science as well as the repinings of 
adversity. Indeed, science shows us, far more 
clearly than the conceptions of every day reason, 
at what an immeasurable distance we are from 
any faculty of conceiving how the universe, ma- 
terial and moral, is the w r ork of the Deity. But 
with regard to the material world, we can at 
least go so far as this; — we can perceive that 
events are brought about, not by insulated in- 
terpositions of divine power exerted in each 
particular case, but by the establishment of 
general laws. This, which is the view of the 



AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 357 

universe proper to science, whose office it is to 
search out these laws, is also the view which, 
throughout this work, we have endeavoured to 
keep present to the mind of the reader. We 
have attempted to show that it combines itself 
most readily and harmoniously with the doc- 
trines of Natural Theology ; that the arguments 
for those doctrines are strengthened, the difficul- 
ties which affect them removed, by keeping it 
steadily before us. We conceive, therefore, that 
the religious philosopher will do well to bear 
this conception in his mind. God is the author 
and governor of the universe through the laws 
which he has given to its parts, the properties 
which he has impressed upon its constituent 
elements : these laws and "properties are, as we 
have already said, the instruments with which 
he works : the institution of such laws, the 
selection of the quantities which they involve, 
their combination and application, are the modes 
in which he exerts and manifests his power, his 
wisdom, his goodness : through these attributes, 
thus exercised, the Creator of all, shapes, moves, 
sustains and guides the visible creation. 

This has been the view of the relation of the 
Deity to the universe entertained by the most 
sagacious and comprehensive minds ever since 
the true object of natural philosophy has been 
clearly and steadily apprehended. The great 
writer who was the first to give philosophers a 
distinct and commanding view of this object, 



358 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



thus expresses himself in his " Confession of 
Faith :" " 1 believe— that notwithstanding God 
hath rested and ceased from creating since the 
first Sabbath, yet, nevertheless, he doth accom- 
plish and fulfil his divine will in all things, 
great and small, singular and general, as fully 
and exactly by providence, as he could by mi- 
racle and new creation, though his working be 
not immediate and direct, but by compass ; not 
violating Nature, which is his own law upon the 
creature." 

And one of our own time, whom we can no 
longer hesitate to place among the worthiest dis- 
ciples of the school of Bacon, conveys the same 
thought in the following passage : " The Divine 
Author of the universe cannot be supposed to 
have laid down particular laws, enumerating all 
individual contingencies, which his materials 
have understood and obey — this would be to 
attribute to him the imperfections of human le- 
gislation ; — but rather, by creating them endued 
with certain fixed qualities and powers, he has 
impressed them in their origin with the spirit, 
not the letter of his law, and made all their sub- 
sequent combinations and relations inevitable 
consequences of this first impression/' * 

2. This, which thus appears to be the mode 
of the Deity's operation in the material world, 
requires some attention on our part in order to 

* Herschel on the Study of Nat. Phil. Art. 27. 



AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 359 

understand it with proper clearness. One rea- 
son of this is, that it is a mode of operation 
altogether different from that in which we are 
able to make matter fulfil our designs. Man 
can construct exquisite machines, can call in 
vast powers, can form extensive combinations, 
in order to bring about results which he has in 
view. But in all this he is only taking advan- 
tage of laws of nature which already exist ; he 
is applying to his use qualities which matter 
already possesses. Nor can he by any effort 
do more. He can establish no new law of na- 
ture which is not a result of the existing ones. 
He can invest matter with no new properties 
which are not modifications of its present attri- 
butes. His greatest advances in skill and power 
are made when he calls to his aid forces which 
before existed unemployed, or when he dis- 
covers so much of the habits of some of the 
elements as to be able to bend them to his pur- 
pose. He navigates the ocean by the assistance 
of the winds which he cannot raise or still : 
and even if we suppose him able to control the 
course of these, his yet unsubjugated ministers, 
this could only be done by studying their cha- 
racters, by learning more thoroughly the laws 
of air and heat and moisture. He cannot give 
the minutest portion of the atmosphere new 
relations, a new course of expansion, new laws 
of motion. But the Divine operations, on the 
other hand, include something much higher. 



360 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



They take in the establishment of the laws of 
the elements, as well as the combination of 
these laws and the determination of the distri- 
bution and quantity of the materials on which 
they shall produce their effect. We must con- 
ceive that the Supreme Power has ordained that |J 
air shall be rarefied, and water turned into 
vapour, by heat ; no less than that he has com- 
bined air and water so as to sprinkle the earth 
with showers, and determined the quantity of 
heat and air and water, so that the showers 
shall be as beneficial as they are. 

We may and must, therefore, in our concep- 
tions of the Divine purpose and agency, go 
beyond the analogy of human contrivances. 
We must conceive the Deity, not only as con- 
structing the most refined and vast machinery, 
with which, as we have already seen, the uni- 
verse is filled ; but we must also imagine him 
as establishing those properties by which such 
machinery is possible : as giving to the mate- 
rials of his structure the qualities by which the 
material is fitted to its use. There is much to 
be found, in natural objects, of the same kind of 
contrivance which is common to these and to hu- 
man inventions ; there are mechanical devices, 
operations of the atmospheric elements, che- 
mical processes , — many such have been pointed 
out, many more exist. But besides these cases 
of the combination of means, which we seem 
able to understand without much difficulty, we 



AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 



361 



are led to consider the Divine Being as the 
author of the laws of chemical, of physical, and 
of mechanical action, and of such other laws 
as make matter what it is ; — and this is a view 
which no analogy of human inventions, no 
knowledge of human powers, at all assist us to 
embody or understand. Science, therefore, as 
we have said, while it discloses to us the mode 
of instrumentality employed by the Deity, con- 
vinces us, more effectually than ever, of the 
impossibility of conceiving God's actions by 
assimilating them to our own. 

3. The laws of material nature, such as we 
have described them, operate at all times, and 
in all places ; affect every province of the uni- 
verse, and involve every relation of its parts | 
Wherever these laws appear, we have a mani- 
festation of the intelligence by which they were 
established. But a law supposes an agent, and 
a power ; for it is the mode according to which 
the agent proceeds, the order according to which 
the power acts. Without the presence of such 
an agent, of such a power, conscious of the 
relations on which the law depends, producing 
the effects which the law prescribes, the law can 
have no efficacy, no existence. Hence we infer 
that the intelligence by which the law is or- 
dained, the power by which it is put in action, 
must be present at all times and in all places 
where the effects of the law occur; that thus 
the knowledge and the agency of the Divine 



362 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



Being pervade every portion of the universe, 
producing all action and passion, all perma- 
nence and change. The laws of nature are the 
laws which he, in his wisdom, prescribes to his 
own acts; his universal presence is the ne- 
cessary condition of any course of events, his 
universal agency the only origin of any efficient 
force. 

This view of the relation of the universe to 
God has been entertained by many of the most 
eminent of those who have combined the con- 
sideration of the material world with the con- 
templation of God himself. It may therefore 
be of use to illustrate it by a few quotations, 
and the more so, as we find this idea remark- 
ably dwelt upon in the works of that writer 
whose religious views must always have a pe- 
culiar interest for the cultivators of physical 
science, the great Newton. 

Thus, in the observations on the nature of the 
Deity with which he closes the " Opticks," he 
declares the various portions of the world, or- 
ganic and inorganic, " can be the effect of 
nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a 
powerful ever-living Agent, who being in all 
places, is more able by his will to move the 
bodies within his boundless uniform sensorium, 
and thereby to form and reform the parts of 
the universe, than we are by our will to move 
the parts of our own bodies." And in the 
Scholium at the end of the " Principia," he 



AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 



363 



says, " God is one and the same God always 
and everywhere. He is omnipresent, not by 
means of his virtue alone, but also by his sub- 
stance, for virtue cannot subsist without sub- 
stance. In him all things are contained, and 
move, but without mutual passion : God is not 
acted upon by the motions of bodies ; and they 
suffer no resistance from the omnipresence of 
God." And he refers to several passages con- 
firmatory of this view, not only in the Scrip- 
tures, but also in writers who hand down to us 
the opinions of some of the most philosophical 
thinkers of the pagan world. He does not dis- 
dain to quote the poets, and among the rest, the 
verses of Virgil ; 

Principio coelum ac terras camposque liquentes 
Lucentemque globum lunae, Titaniaque astra, 
Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus 
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet : 

warning his reader however against the doctrine 
which such expressions as these are sometimes 
understood to express : " All these things he 
rules, not as the soul of the world, but as the 
Lord of all." 

Clarke, the friend and disciple of Newton, is 
one of those who has most strenuously put for- 
wards the opinion of which we are speaking, 
" All things which we commonly say are the 
effects of the natural powers of matter and laws 
of motion, are indeed (if we will speak strictly 



364 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



and properly,) the effects of God's acting upon 
matter continually and at every moment, either 
immediately by himself, or mediately by some 
created intelligent being. Consequently there 
is no such thing as the cause of nature, or the 
power of nature," independent of the effects 
produced by the will of God. 

Dugald Stewart has adopted and illustrated 
the same opinion, and quotes with admiration 
the well-known passage of Pope, concerning the 
Divine Agency, which 

" Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent." 

Mr. Stewart, with no less reasonableness than 
charity, asserts the propriety of interpreting 
such passages according to the scope and spirit 
of the reasonings with which they are con- 
nected ; * since, though by a captious reader 
they might be associated with erroneous views 
of the Deity, they may be susceptible of a more 
favourable construction ; and we may often see 
in them only the results of the necessary im- 
perfection of our language, when we dwell 
upon the omnipresence and universal activity 
of God. 

Finally, we may add that the same opinions 
still obtain the assent of the best philosophers 

* Phil, of Act. and Moral Powers, i. 373. 



AGENCY OF THE DEITY. 



365 



and divines of our time. Sir John Herschel 
says, (Discourse on the Study of Natural Phi- 
losophy, p. 37.) " We would no way be un- 
derstood to deny the constant exercise of His 
direct power in maintaining the system of na- 
ture ; or the ultimate emanation, of every energy 
which material agents exert, from his immediate 
will, acting in conformity with his own laws." 
And the Bishop of London, in a note to his 
" Sermon on the duty of combining religious 
instruction with intellectual culture," observes, 
" the student in natural philosophy will find 
rest from all those perplexities which are occa- 
sioned by the obscurity of causation, in the sup- 
position, which although it was discredited by 
the patronage of Malebranche and the Carte- 
sians, has been adopted by Clarke and Dugald 
Stewart, and which is by far the most simple 
and sublime account of the matter ; that all the 
events which are continually taking place in the 
different parts of the material universe, are the 
immediate effects of the divine agency." 



366 



Chapter IX. 

On the Impression produced by considering the 
Nature and Prospects of Science ; or, on the 
Impossibility of the Progress of our Knowledge 
ever enabling us to comprehend the Nature of 
the Deity. 

F we were to stop at the view presented 
in the last chapter, it might be supposed 
that — by considering God as eternal and omni- 
present, conscious of all the relations, and of all 
the objects of the universe, instituting laws 
founded on the contemplation of these relations, 
and carrying these laws into effect by his im- 
mediate energy, — we had attained to a concep- 
tion, in some degree definite, of the Deity, such 
as natural philosophy leads us to conceive him. 
But by resting in this mode of conception, we 
should overlook, or at least should disconnect 
from our philosophical doctrines, all that most 
interests and affects us in the character of the 
Creator and Preserver of the world ; — namely, 
that he is the lawgiver and judge of our actions ; 
the proper object of our prayer and adoration ; 
the source from which we may hope for moral 
strength here, and for the reward of our obedi- 




INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 367 

ence and the elevation of our nature in another 
state of existence. 

We are very far from believing that our phi- 
losophy alone can give us such assurance of 
these important truths as is requisite for our 
guidance and support $ but we think that even 
our physical philosophy will point out to us the 
necessity of proceeding far beyond that con- 
ception of God, which represents him merely as 
the mind in which reside all the contrivance^ 
law, and energy of the material world. We 
believe that the view of the universe which 
modern science has already opened to us, com- 
pared with the prospect of what she has still to 
do in pursuing the path on which she has just 
entered, will show us how immeasurably inade- 
quate such a mode of conception would be : 
and that if we take into our account, as we 
must in reason do, all that of which we have 
knowledge and consciousness, and of which we 
have as yet no systematic science, we shall be 
led to a conviction that the Creator and Pre- 
server of the material world must also contain 
in him such properties and attributes as imply 
his moral character, and as fall in most con- 
sistently with all that we learn in any other 
way of his providence and holiness, his justice 
and mercy. 

l. The sciences which have at present ac- 
quired any considerable degree of completeness, 
are those in which an extensive and varied col- 



368 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



lection of phenomena, and their proximate 
causes, have been reduced to a few simple ge- 
neral laws. Such are Astronomy and Me- 
chanics, and perhaps, so far as its physical con- 
ditions are concerned, Optics. Other portions 
of human knowledge can be considered as per- 
fect sciences, in any strict sense of the term, 
only when they have assumed this form ; when 
the various appearances which they involve are 
reduced to a few principles, such as the laws of 
motion and the mechanical properties of the 
luminiferous ether. If we could trace the end- 
less varieties of the forms of crystals, and the 
complicated results of chemical composition, to 
some one comprehensive law necessarily point- 
ing out the crystalline form of any given che- 
mical compound, Mineralogy would become an 
exact science. As yet, however, we can scarcely 
boast of the existence of any other such sciences 
than those which we at first mentioned : and so 
far therefore as we attempt to give definiteness 
to our conception of the Deity, by considering 
him as the intelligent depositary and executor 
of laws of nature, we can subordinate to such a 
mode of conception no portion of the creation, 
save the mechanical movements of the universe, 
and the propagation and properties of light. 

2. And if we attempt to argue concerning the 
nature of the laws and relations which govern 
those provinces of creation whither our science 
has not yet reached, by applying some analogy 



INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 369 



borrowed from cases where it has been success- 
ful, we have no chance of obtaining any except 
the most erroneous and worthless guesses. The 
history of human speculations, as well as the 
nature of the objects of them, shows how cer- 
tainly this must happen. The great generaliza- 
tions which have been established in one depart- 
ment of our knowledge, have been applied in 
vain to the purpose of throwing light on the 
other portions which still continue in obscurity. 
When the Newtonian philosophy had explained 
so many mechanical facts, by the two great 
steps, — of resolving the action of a whole mass 
into the actions of its minutest particles, and 
considering these particles as centres of force, — 
attempts were naturally soon made to apply the 
same mode of explanation to facts of other dif- 
ferent kinds. It was conceived that the whole 
of natural philosophy must consist in investiga- 
ting the laws of force by which particles of dif- 
ferent substances attracted and repelled, and 
thus produced motions, or vibrations to and from 
the particles. Yet what were the next great 
discoveries in physics ? The action of a galva- 
nic wire upon a magnet ; which is not to attract 
or repel it, but to turn it to the right and left ; to 
produce motion, not to or from, but transverse 
to the line drawn to the acting particles ; and 
again, the undulatory theory of light, in which 
it appeared that the undulations must not be 
longitudinal, as all philosophers, following the 

W. B B 



370 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS* 



analogy of all cases previously conceived. had ? 
at first, supposed them to be, but transverse to 
the path of the ray. Here, though the step from 
the known to the unknown was comparatively 
small, when made conjecturally it was made in 
a direction very wide of the truth. How im- 
possible then must it be to attain in this manner 
to any conception of a law which shall help us 
to understand the whole government of the uni- 
verse ! 

3. Still, however, in the laws of the lumini- 
ferous ether, and of the other fluid, (if it be an- 
other fluid) by which galvanism and magnetism 
are connected, we have something approaching 
nearly to mechanical action, and, possibly, here- 
after to be identified with it. But we cannot 
turn to any other part of our physical know- 
ledge, without perceiving that the gulf which 
separates it from the exact sciences is yet wider 
and more obscure. Who shall enunciate for us, 
and in terms of what notions, the general law 
of chemical composition and decomposition ? 
sometimes indeed we give the name of attraction 
to the affinity by which we suppose the particles 
of the various ingredients of bodies to be aggre- 
gated 5 but no one can point out any common 
feature between this and the attractions of which 
alone we know the exact effects. He who shall 
discover the true general law of the forces by 
which elements form compounds, will probably 
advance as far beyond the discoveries of Newton, 



INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 371 

as Newton went beyond Aristotle. But who 
shall say in what direction this vast flight shall 
be, and what new views it shall open to us of 
the manner in which matter obeys the laws of 
the Creator ? 

4. But suppose this flight performed -we are 
yet but at the outset of the progress which must 
carry us towards Him : we have yet to begin 
to learn all that we are to know T concerning the 
ultimate laws of organized bodies. What is the 
principle of life ? What is the rule of that action 
of which assimilation, secretion, developement, 
are manifestations? and which appears to be 
farther removed from mere chemistry than chem- 
istry is from mechanics. And what again is the 
new principle, as it seems to be, which is ex- 
hibited in the irritability of an animal nerve? 
the existence of a sense ? How different is this 
from all the preceding notions ! No efforts can 
avoid or conceal the vast but inscrutable chasm. 
Those theorists, who have maintained most 
strenuously the possibility of tracing the pheno- 
mena of animal life to the influence of physical 
agents, have constantly been obliged to suppose 
a mode of agency altogether different from any 
yet known in physics. Thus Lamarck, one of 
the most noted of such speculators, in describing 
the course of his researches, says, " I was soon 
persuaded that the internal sentiment constituted 
a power which it was necessary to take into 
account. " And Bichat, another writer on the 



372 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



same subject, while he declares his dissent from 
Stahl, and the earlier speculators, who had re- 
ferred everything in the economy of life to a 
single principle, which they call the anima, the 
vital principle, and so forth, himself introduces 
several principles, or laws, all utterly foreign to 
the region of physics : namely, organic sensibi- 
lity, organic contractility, animal sensibility, 
animal contractility, and the like. Supposing 
such principles really to exist, how far enlarged 
and changed must our views be before we can 
conceive these properties, including the faculty 
of perception, which they imply, to be produced 
by the will and power of one supreme Being, 
acting by fixed laws. Yet without conceiving 
this, we cannot conceive the agency of that 
Deity who is incessantly thus acting, in count- 
less millions of forms and modes. 

How strongly then does science represent God 
to us as incomprehensible ! his attributes as un- 
fathomable ! His power, his wisdom, his good- 
ness, appear in each of the provinces of nature 
which are thus brought before us ; and in each, 
the more we study them, the more impressive, 
the more admirable do they appear. When then 
we find these qualities manifested in each of so 
many successive ways, and each manifestation 
rising above the preceding by unknown degrees, 
and through a progression of unknown extent, 
what other language can we use concerning such, 
attributes than that they are infinite ? What 



INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 373 

mode of expression can the most cautious philo- 
sophy suggest, other than that He, to whom we 
thus endeavour to approach, is infinitely wise, 
powerful, and good ? 

5. But with sense and consciousness the his- 
tory of living things only begins. They have 
instincts, affections, passions, will. How entirely 
lost and bewildered do we find ourselves when 
we endeavour to conceive these faculties com- 
municated by means of general laws ! Yet they 
are so communicated from God, and of such laws 
he is the lawgiver. At what an immeasurable 
interval is he thus placed above every thing 
which the creation of the inanimate world alone 
would imply ; and how far must he transcend all 
ideas founded on such laws as we find there ! 

6. But we have still to go further and far 
higher. The world of reason and of morality is 
a part of the same creation, as the world of 
matter and of sense. The will of man is swayed 
by rational motives ; its workings are inevitably 
compared with a rule of action ; he has a con- 
science which speaks of right and wrong. These 
are laws of man's nature no less than the laws of 
his material existence, or his animal impulses. 
Yet what entirely new conceptions do they in- 
volve ? How incapable of being resolved into, 
or assimilated to, the results of mere matter, or 
mere sense ! Moral good and evil, merit and 
demerit, virtue and depravity, if ever they are 
the subjects of strict science, must belong to a 



374 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



science which views these things, not with refe- 
rence to time or space, or mechanical causation, 
not with reference to fluid or ether, nervous 
irritability or corporeal feeling, but to their own 
proper modes of conception ; with reference to 
the relations with which it is possible that these 
notions may be connected, and not to relations 
suggested by other subjects of a completely ex- 
traneous and heterogeneous nature. And ac- 
cording to such relations must the laws of the 
moral world be apprehended, by any intelli- 
gence which contemplates them at all. 

There can be no wider interval in philosophy 
than the separation which must exist between 
the laws of mechanical force and motion, and 
the laws of free moral action. Yet the tendency 
of men to assume, in the portions of human 
knowledge which are out of their reach, a simi- 
larity of type to those with which they are fami- 
liar, can leap over even this interval. Laplace 
has asserted that " an intelligence which, at a 
given instant, should know all the forces by 
which nature is urged, and the respective situa- 
tion of the beings of which nature is composed, 
if, moreover, it were sufficiently comprehensive 
to subject these data to calculation, would in- 
clude in the same formula, the movements of the 
largest bodies of the universe and those of the 
slightest atom. Nothing would be uncertain to 
such an intelligence, and the future, no less 
than the past, would be present to its eyes." If 



INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 375 

we speak merely of mechanical actions, this may, 
perhaps, be assumed to be an admissible repre- 
sentation of the nature of their connexion in the 
sight of the supreme intelligence. But to the 
rest of what passes in the world, such language 
is altogether inapplicable. A formula is a brief 
mode of denoting a rule of calculating in which 
numbers are to be used : and numerical mea- 
sures are applicable only to things of which the 
relations depend on time and space. By such 
elements, in such a mode, how are we to esti- 
mate happiness and virtue, thought and will? 
To speak of a formula with regard to such things, 
would be to assume that their laws must needs 
take the shape of those laws of the material world 
which our intellect most fully comprehends. A 
more absurd and unphilosophical assumption we 
can hardly imagine. 

We conceive, therefore, that the laws by 
which God governs his moral creatures, reside 
in his mind, invested with that kind of gene- 
rality, whatever it be, of which such laws are 
capable ; but of the character of such general 
laws, we know nothing more certainly than 
this, that it must be altogether different from 
the character of those laws which regulate the 
material world. The inevitable necessity of 
such a total difference is suggested by the 
analogy of all the knowledge which we possess 
and all the conceptions which we can form. 
And, accordingly, no persons, except those 



376 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



whose minds have been biassed by some pe- 
culiar habit or course of thought, are likely to 
run into the confusion and perplexity which 
are produced by assimilating too closely the 
government and direction of voluntary agents 
to the production of trains of mechanical and 
physical phenomena. In whatever manner vo- 
luntary and moral agency depend upon the 
Supreme Being, it must be in some such way 
that they still continue to bear the character of 
will, action, and morality. And, though too 
exclusive an attention to material phenomena 
may sometimes have made physical philoso- 
phers blind to this manifest difference, it has 
been clearly seen and plainly asserted by those 
who have taken the most comprehensive views 
of the nature and tendency of science. u I 
believe," says Bacon, in his Confession of Faith, 
6 6 that, at the first the soul of man was not pro- 
duced by heaven or earth, but was breathed 
immediately from God : so that the ways and 
proceedings of God with spirits are not included 
in nature ; that is in the laws of heaven and 
earth ; but are reserved to the law of his secret 
will and grace ; wherein God worketh still, and 
resteth not from the work of redemption, as he 
resteth from the work of creation ; but con- 
tinueth working to the end of the world." We 
may be permitted to observe here, that, when 
Bacon has thus to speak of God's dealings 
with his moral creatures, he does not take his 



INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 377 

phraseology from those sciences which can offer 
none but false and delusive analogies ; but helps 
out the inevitable scantiness of our human know- 
ledge, by words borrowed from a source more 
fitted to supply our imperfections. Our na- 
tural speculations cannot carry us to the ideas 
of 6 grace' and 'redemption;' but in the wide 
blank which they leave, of all that concerns our 
hopes of the Divine support and favour, the 
inestimable knowledge which revelation, as we 
conceive, gives us, finds ample room and appro- 
priate place. 

7. Yet even in the view of our moral constitu- 
tion which natural reason gives, we may trace 
laws that imply a personal relation to our Crea- 
tor. How can we avoid considering that as a 
true view of man's being and place, without 
which, his best faculties are never fully de- 
veloped, his noblest energies never called out, 
his highest point of perfection never reached? 
Without the thought of a God over all, super- 
intending our actions, approving our virtues, 
transcending our highest conceptions of good, 
man would never rise to those higher regions of 
moral excellence which we know him to be 
capable of attaining. " To deny a God," again 
says the great philosopher, " destroys mag- 
nanimity and the raising of human nature ; for 
take an example of a dog, and mark what a 
generosity and courage he will put on, when he 
finds himself maintained by a man ; who, to 



378 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



him, is instead of a God, or melior natura : 
which courage is manifestly such, as that crea- 
ture, without that confidence of a better nature 
than his own, could never attain. So man, when 
he resteth and assureth himself upon divine pro- 
tection and favour, gathereth a force and faith, 
which human nature could not obtain. There- 
fore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in 
this, that it depriveth human nature of the means 
to exalt itself above human frailty."* 

Such a law, then, of reference to a Supremely 
Good Being, is impressed upon our nature, as 
the condition and means of its highest moral 
advancement. And strange indeed it would be 
if we should suppose, that in a system where all 
besides indicates purpose and design, this law 
should proceed from no such origin ; and no 
less inconceivable, that such a law, purposely 
impressed upon man to purify and elevate his 
nature, should delude and deceive him. 

8. Nothing remains, therefore, but that the 
Creator, who, for purposes that even we can see 
to be wise and good, has impressed upon man 
this disposition to look to him for support, for 
advancement, for such happiness as is reconcile- 
able with holiness ; — this tendency to believe 
him to be the union of all perfection, the highest 
point of all intellectual and moral excellence ;— 
is in reality such a guardian and judge, such a 

* Bacon. Essay on Atheism. 



INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 379 

good, and wise, and perfect Being, as we thus 
irresistibly conceive him. It would indeed be 
extravagant to assert that the imagination of the 
creature, itself the work of God, can invent a 
higher point of goodness, of justice, of holiness, 
than the Creator himself possesses : that the 
Eternal Mind, from whom our notions of good 
and right are derived, is not himself directed 
by the rules which these notions imply. 

It is difficult to dwell steadily on such 
thoughts : but they will at least serve to con- 
firm the reflexion which it was our object to 
illustrate ; namely, how incomparably the na- 
ture of God must be elevated above any con- 
ceptions which our natural reason enables us to 
form : and we have been led to these views, it 
will be recollected, by following the clue of 
winch science gave us the beginning. The 
Divine Mind must be conceived by us as the 
seat of those laws of nature which we have dis- 
covered. It must be no less the seat of those 
laws which we have not yet discovered, though 
these may and must be of a character far dif- 
ferent from anything we can guess. The Su- 
preme Intelligence must therefore contain the 
laws, each according to their true dependance, 
of organic life, of sense of animal impulse, and 
must contain also the purpose and intent for 
which these powers were put in play. But the 
Governing Mind must comprehend also the 
laws of the responsible creatures which the 



380 



RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



world contains, and must entertain the purposes 
for which their responsible agency was given 
them. It must include these laws and purposes, 
connected by means of the notions, which re- 
sponsibility implies, of desert and reward, of 
moral excellence in various degrees, and of 
well-being as associated with right doing. All 
the laws which govern the moral world are ex- 
pressions of the thought and intentions of our 
Supreme Ruler. All the contrivances for moral 
no less than for physical good, for the peace of 
mind, and other rewards of virtue, for the eleva- 
tion and purification of individual character, for 
the civilization and refinement of states, their 
advancement in intellect and virtue, for the dif- 
fusion of good, and the repression of evil; all 
the blessings that wait on perseverance and 
energy in a good cause ; on unquenchable love 
of mankind, and unconquerable devotedness to 
truth ; on purity and self-denial ; on faith, hope, 
and charity ; — all these things are indications of 
the character, will, and future intentions of that 
God, of whom we have endeavoured to track 
the footsteps upon earth, and to show his han- 
diwork in the heavens. " This God is our God, 
for ever and ever/' And if, endeavouring to 
trace the plan of the vast labyrinth of laws by 
which the universe is governed, we are some- 
times lost and bewildered, and can scarcely, or 
not at all, discern the lines by which pain, and 
sorrow, and vice fall in with a scheme directed 



INCOMPREHENSIBLE NATURE OF GOD. 381 

to the strictest right and greatest good, we yet 
find no room to faint or falter ; knowing that 
these are the darkest and most tangled recesses 
of our knowledge ; that into them science has as 
yet cast no ray of light ; that in them reason 
has as yet caught sight of no general law by 
which we may securely hold : while, in those 
regions where we can see clearly, where science 
has thrown her strongest illumination upon the 
scheme of creation ; where we have had dis- 
played to us the general laws which give rise to 
all the multifarious variety of particular facts ; 
— we find all full of wisdom, and harmony, and 
beauty : and all this wise selection of means, 
this harmonious combination of laws, this beau- 
tiful symmetry of relations, directed, with no 
exception which human investigation has yet 
discovered, to the preservation, the diffusion, 
the well-being of those living things, which, 
though of their nature we know so little, we 
cannot doubt to be the worthiest objects of the 
Creator's care. 



FINIS. 



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